Stay Close
by the ramblin rose
Summary: This is a somewhat AU version of what happened between Michonne and Andrea when they found each other. It is rated M for language, violence, and sexual content which may all appear in the future. Michonne, Andrea, Michandrea
1. Chapter 1

**AN: I own nothing from the Walking Dead.**

**This story is going to be somewhat AU since I can easily admit that I need to brush up on what details the show **_**does**_** provide us with about Michonne and Andrea's time together. Since I don't have the means to do that at this time, I'm somewhat just ignoring anything the show gave us (any details/the details around Andrea's illness, etc.) and striking out on my own to narrate my own made up version of what happened between the two women. **

**The story is rated M for violence, language, and *ahem* sexual content. If you're not comfortable with the Michonne/Andrea pairing, this isn't the story for you. **

**As with all my writing, any reviews/comments are welcome. Knowing that people are reading keeps me writing.**

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She lie there in the dirt, her heart pounding. It seemed like she'd been running for an eternity trying to escape the Walkers that just kept coming, wouldn't let up. She was low on ammunition, almost out, and the final Walker that had descended upon her had promised to put an end to it all. For a moment, despite her terror, she'd tried to think that at least she was going to be with Amy, with her parents, with Dale. Maybe those were the only people that really cared about her.

_The others had left her. They'd all left her._

The last face she'd seen on the farm had been Carol's. She'd saved her, at least momentarily, but the Walkers were everywhere. Carol had disappeared from her sight, and she hadn't found her again, being sure that in the hoard of Walkers, some of them feeding, she'd likely become one of the victims.

_She was alone_.

She knew that they had probably thought she was dead. Who would have thought that she would make it out of there when she'd been thrown down at least once by the oncoming bags of rotting flesh? She had made it out, though, even she wasn't sure exactly how it had happened, but the fact remained that she'd made it out and she'd fled through the woods, also overrun with animated corpses.

And after all of that she'd die in the middle of the woods, in the damp leaves, torn apart by a Walker. All the fighting would have been for nothing, and she realized suddenly that it would have been so much better to have done what she wanted to do, to go at the CDC, with Dale there by her side. She'd left to save him, and in the end she hadn't saved him at all. She hadn't saved herself either.

The ringing in the air was a sound that she hadn't heard before and suddenly the attacking Walker slumped forward, its head severed completely from its body, revealing her savior.

Except her savior was something she was entirely unprepared for. Standing above her was a woman, yes, it was a woman, although cloaked, her face entirely hidden. In one hand she held a sword, which she slung clean of the mess the Walker had left behind. In the other hand she held chains which led back to the two armless Walkers standing just behind her.

_Like dogs on a leash_. Andrea thought. Who led Walkers around like dogs?

Andrea was suddenly terrified of the cloaked figure, terror stricken by her own savior. The woman swung her arm back in a fluid motion, sheathing the sword behind her back. She stood, for a moment longer, looming over Andrea, not saying anything and making no other movements.

"Please don't kill me," Andrea stuttered.

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The blonde was obviously not thinking clearly, Michonne thought. Why on Earth would she bother to kill her now? If she had any intention of not letting the woman live, she'd have merely given the Dead another minute or two to do what it intended. She wouldn't have survived anyway. She didn't have time to go around killing the Dead to save people, just to kill them moments later. That would be a waste of energy, and Michonne wasn't one to waste energy.

She also wasn't one to tolerate silliness like a blonde laying in a pile of wet leaves and begging for her life.

Michonne turned, not saying anything, and started back in the direction she'd been travelling, no longer worried about the blonde she'd seen sprinting through the woods, entirely unaware of her presence. She was only focused now on finding a place to stop for the evening, a place to make camp. She was hungry, and it was chilly. She was ready for a fire.

"I'm Andrea," the voice said, snapping her out of her thoughts. It was the blonde, apparently she was following her now, a single duffel bag thrown over her shoulder. Michonne eyed it, still not taking down her cloak. The bag was filled with guns.

_They did her a world of good._ Michonne thought. She'd learned long ago that guns weren't the way to go these days. Michonne wasn't much of a shot when it came to guns and you needed precision when it came to dealing with Dead. She had abandoned altogether the idea of guns not long after she discovered that they weren't going to protect her in this war zone. Her knife, which she wore strapped to her waste, and her katana, which she wore slung over her back were the things that had provided her safe passage so far.

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Andrea tagged along behind the cloaked woman, wishing that she would speak. She had introduced herself, but the cloaked woman had not responded. Andrea felt a churning in her stomach. The woman had saved her, the woman had made no move to kill her, but she wasn't speaking to her, was barely acknowledging her presence. She had turned toward her, her face still cloaked in darkness.

For a moment Andrea remembered all the old movies she'd seen where Death had appeared, or the Grim Reaper, wearing cloaks that hid some awful sight. The Grim Reaper had carried a scythe, this woman carried a sword, but the fact remained that Andrea could see the face of neither.

How had the woman come to leading around Walkers like they were pets? Who were the Walkers, and why had she chosen them?

Andrea fell out of step with the cloaked woman for a moment. She wanted to know who this person was. There was something about the mystery of the figure that drew her to want to follow her, even though part of her gut was telling her that apparently the woman wanted to be left alone, maybe she had no interest in Andrea's company at all. She seemed to be travelling alone.

_She's alone, just like me._ Andrea thought. Still, watching the woman walking several paces in front of her, Andrea somehow didn't feel that their situations were exactly equal. Something told her that this woman's group had not abandoned her, had not left her behind because they doubted that she could survive a Walker attack. It was as if this woman was alone because that was what she had chosen for herself.

Andrea was intrigued by a woman that would choose to be alone out here, when everything was as dangerous and unpredictable as it was. Who would be alone if they had any other choice?

She trotted forward again, trying to match step with the cloaked woman once more, determined to tag along until at least the woman told her to leave her alone. She wasn't going to go off on her own until there was some indication from the cloaked figure that her presence, although obviously not _desired_ was also not _tolerated_.

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The blonde had disappeared a moment. Michonne hadn't looked back. If the blonde had decided to continue on the way that she was going, that was fine with Michonne. She didn't necessarily relish the fact of someone tagging along behind her, like a kid, relying on her to clear the way of the Dead.

A large majority of the Dead avoided Michonne as she roamed around, going anywhere and nowhere at the same time, and this was owing to the only two companions she'd had since the insanity started. They were quiet, uncomplaining companions, and they left Michonne alone with her thoughts, something she enjoyed. She didn't know how the presence of the blonde would throw off that equilibrium and if it might draw more attention from the Dead.

"My group, they left me," the blonde said. Michonne turned to look at her again. She'd caught back up. She was staying in step now, panting a little from exertion.

When Michonne didn't respond to her, the blonde had resigned herself to walking silently for a while and Michonne turned her thoughts back to looking for a place that seemed suitable to build a small fire and rest for the night, the Dead on chains keeping watch over her. She'd developed the ability to sleep very lightly, though she still woke rested most mornings.

"Did you have a group? _Do_ you have a group?" The blonde asked. Michonne didn't respond. She didn't have a group, and she also didn't have the desire for small talk.

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Andrea was a little frustrated. The cloaked woman was saying nothing. For a moment she felt like Ebenezer Scrooge when he was face to face with the ghost of Christmas Future. It felt like the cloaked woman beside her was some sort of all-knowing entity, not even human at all. Perhaps she couldn't speak, maybe she didn't have a voice? Or was she simply choosing not to speak to Andrea?

Andrea followed her own, her frustration growing at almost the same pace as her curiosity. Who was this woman that walked through the woods, lopping the heads off of Walkers to save strangers and then just turning away from them, silently wandering off.

The cloaked figure led her to a spot where, it seemed, she was planning on stopping. She chained the Walkers that she had to a tree, and then she stripped them of the bags that they were carrying, bringing them away from them just a bit.

She still wasn't speaking, but she was moving about, attempting to make what Andrea could only guess was a camp. She cleared a space and Andrea quickly realized that she was going about gathering wood.

_We're going to build a fire?_ Andrea thought. It seemed absurd to build a fire with as many Walkers as they had seen in the area. She thought they'd be upon them in no time, but the cloaked woman didn't slow her activity in any way.

"Can I help you?" Andrea asked. There was no response. The woman continued simply to gather wood and pile it into the space that she had cleared.

Matching the woman's silence, Andrea put herself to gathering wood, piling it into the same area. Finally the woman must have felt that they had enough wood because she sat, and began arranging it. Before Andrea really knew what was happening, she had a small fire crackling and was feeding it more wood.

She quietly rummaged in the bags, producing two cans which she opened, and placed near the fire.

_She's going to feed me?_

Andrea took a chance and sat near the fire, far enough from the woman that she wouldn't feel that she was crowding her, not knowing how this individual felt about human contact. From her stance and her pets, it didn't look like she would exactly be into sharing any secrets any time soon, and probably it had been some time since she'd been in the presence of others. Andrea thought that maybe that's why her socialization skills seemed a little rusty.

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Michonne put the cans near the fire to heat them. Beans were a satisfying meal, especially if that's really all you had, but they were much better if they were hot. She was freezing, and the fire was making her feel a little better, a little more relaxed. She didn't care for the cold at all.

The blonde was sitting near her, nervously watching her. Michonne smiled to herself. She had no intention of harming the woman, none at all, but it was kind of entertaining to see her squirm the way she was.

_If she's so terrified, why doesn't she just go?_ Michonne thought.

The woman had mentioned that her group had abandoned her. Michonne had been alone all this time and had no idea what one would expect or accept from a group, but apparently it had meant a lot to the blonde. The woman was shivering, despite her proximity to the fire and she looked exhausted and sad.

Michonne reached around and rummaged in her bags. She had two blankets to her name, but she could acquire more if the need be. She offered one to the blonde, silently. The blonde hesitated as though she weren't sure she should take it.

Michonne pushed her hood down.

"Go on, take it. It's a blanket, not a snake," she said.

The blonde hesitated and gingerly reached a hand out, taking the blanket.

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Andrea took the blanket, taking a moment to study the woman in the glow of the campfire. The warmth of the fire was nice, but it was even better when she'd wrapped herself in the blanket.

The woman in front of her was not what she'd imagined. She was beautiful, even if her features were sharp and her expression cold. Still, there had been a glimmer in her eyes when she'd offered the blanket.

"Thank you," Andrea said.

"You're welcome," the cloaked woman said.

Now that they were talking, Andrea wondered if she could get more out of the woman. Maybe she could solve something of the mystery that the cloaked woman represented.

"My name is Andrea," Andrea repeated.

"Michonne," the woman replied.

"My group left me," Andrea said. "I'm sure they thought the Walkers got me. A herd of them attacked the farm we were staying at." She paused for a few minutes. There was no response from Michonne, though the woman did look at her. Michonne checked the beans and offered Andrea a can and a spoon which she produced from her bag. Andrea accepted it and ate the food greedily.

Michonne calmly ate hers, but Andrea realized that there wasn't going to be any small talk tonight. Maybe she could eventually draw some conversation out of her new travelling companion, but she wasn't going to be one to open up immediately.

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Michonne kicked out enough of the fire to leave it burning low. Andrea was already asleep, having abandoned her efforts at small talk.

Michonne curled up far enough away from the fire to avoid any flying ashes catching her blanket on fire, but close enough to soak up some of the warmth that the dying embers provided and drifted off to sleep, unsure of what she was going to do about the woman who was sleeping a few feet from her, and who was obviously considering staying with her, despite her attempt to show that she wasn't friendly and inviting in any way.

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**AN: So what do you think? We're just getting started…I'm a little excited about the possibilities.**

**Please excuse spelling/grammar issues. They happen from time to time. **


	2. Chapter 2

**AN: I want to thank you all who took the time to review.**

**Since you were so kind, I've decided to put out another chapter and continue with my exploration of what happened with our ladies.**

**A reminder to everyone who reads, I am not going to be following much (if any) of the plot from the television show surrounding these two. I was a late comer to the TWD fandom and missed quite a bit from the early part of Season 3. I don't have access to the season at this time, so I'm just writing my own version. Sorry for those of you who are sticklers about that, but there's really no way around it for me. Also, although I don't intend to make the characters OC or go too OOC, I will be interpreting them my own way. **

**That being said, I hope you enjoy, regardless.**

**Please review if you feel so inclined, I greatly appreciate it!**

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Andrea was awakened by the feeling of Michonne nudging her with her boot and pulling the blanket away from her. She stirred a little, vaguely aware that the fire was almost out. She had slept very deeply, more deeply than she had in some time. She wondered if the presence of Michonne sleeping near her had anything to do with it. It was difficult not to feel safe in her presence.

"You can come with me, or you can stay here," Michonne said, "but the blanket _is_ coming with me."

Andrea absentmindedly relinquished the blanket and sat up. She watched as Michonne quietly folded it and returned it to her bag. She loaded the two Walkers again and started to unchain them from the tree that held them hostage.

"I'm coming," Andrea said. She struggled to her feet, not entirely awake.

Michonne didn't respond to her in any way, she just finished kicking out the remaining smoldering embers from the fire and started forward, giving the two Walkers trailing her a little jerk. Andrea fell in step beside her.

"Where are we going?" Andrea asked. She was used to her group always having a destination. They knew where they were going, or at least where they hoped to be going. There was always some sort of answer to "where?" and when there wasn't they were camping and attempting to make the most normal type of lifestyle available to them in the madness that surrounded them. This woman, who currently seemed to Andrea to be only a little less than a mythical creature, didn't seem to function on the same set of rules. Their "camp" had only been a place to sleep, and now they were moving again.

The woman didn't respond in any way and Andrea grew a little tense. Was this how it was going to be from here out? Was she actually going to be expected to travel in silence? They hadn't eaten anything for breakfast either, and Andrea could feel that the beans from the night before were gone. She didn't want to ask Michonne anything about breakfast, though, sure that she wouldn't get a response anyway.

"So is it something about me, or do you just never talk?" Andrea finally asked after they'd been walking along in silence for a bit. They'd encountered maybe three roaming Walkers and Michonne had taken them down, without even much concern, before Andrea had even thought about responding.

No response from the woman, of course.

"I don't have a weapon," Andrea stuttered. She realized that when the last Walker had appeared. Michonne had loaded the bag of guns, essentially useless, onto the shoulders of one of the Walkers. Andrea had lost her knife at the farm. She was unarmed and at the mercy of the samurai in front of her.

Michonne stopped a moment and turned to face Andrea. Her cloak was tied securely around her shoulders, but she'd left the hood down, for now. Andrea regarded her face in the daylight. She was surprised at herself, but she couldn't help but think that the woman was remarkably beautiful, and though she wore a blank expression, there was something in her eyes that seemed a little softer than her tightly pursed lips suggested she was.

"It's not smart to go about unarmed," Michonne said quietly.

_That she responded to_, Andrea thought.

Michonne walked around behind the Walkers and dug in her bag a minute, joining Andrea again after securing the bags once more. She produced a knife and handed it to Andrea.

"I hope you're not too afraid to use it," she said.

"I'm not," Andrea said, now unsure of what the woman must think of her. "I lost mine when a herd attacked the farm that I was staying at. I don't _usually_ go around without a weapon."

"No, I can see you had plenty of guns," Michonne said, responding with a slightly sarcastic tone, "but they're a lot more useful with bullets. Knives are better, it doesn't make much sense to use a weapon to kill the Dead with a weapon that's just going to draw the attention of more Dead."

It was Andrea's turn to be silent now. She frowned at Michonne, but didn't respond to her. Michonne gathered up the chains again without a word and gave it a quick snap, the Walkers behind her sparking again and following her. Andrea stood there a minute, and then jogged ahead to catch back up with Michonne.

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The blonde, _Andrea_, asked a lot of questions. Michonne wasn't a fan of answering questions. She'd never really been a fan of it. That's why she had been a lawyer. She'd been the one asking the questions, not having to respond to them. It had even been something she'd struggled with from time to time with her girls. They'd both been in the stage where they asked a _lot_ of questions. Mostly they wanted to know "why?" about everything, and they'd used the word incessantly. She'd been patient with them, though, they were her babies. The blonde was nothing to her, and she didn't want to entertain all of her questions, especially the ones she didn't have an answer to.

She hadn't really intended to have the blonde follow her around after she saved her from the Dead. She had thought the blonde maybe had somewhere to be, someone to be with, but it seemed now that she had unknowingly gained herself a travel partner, one who had no supplies, and even lacked a weapon.

The first place they were going was to the nearest town. They needed food, and Michonne needed to give the blonde the opportunity to stock up on whatever it was she would need. Winter wasn't going to be kind to them, and Michonne didn't want to have to be wholly responsible for the both of them. If Andrea was going to stay with her, she was going to pull her own weight. Michonne had lost her babies, and in her mind _they_ had been the only two people that she was responsible for. She wasn't going to be taking care of this woman now, not because she'd just stumbled over her in the woods and decided to buy her another day to live.

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Andrea had followed along in silence, a little annoyed at her growing belief that Michonne considered her someone who wasn't able to take care of herself. She hadn't left the farm unprepared because she thought it was a great idea, she'd done it because there hadn't been time for anything else. Her departure had been abrupt, to say the least, but it didn't seem like Michonne was even considering that factor.

When they emerged from the woods, visibly not far from a town, Andrea assumed that Michonne had some kind of plan in mind, but she wasn't going to ask her anything else. She could be just as quiet as her travel companion.

She'd followed Michonne into town, the woman in front of her taking out any Walkers that they encountered before Andrea even had a chance to draw the knife she'd been given. She sulked a little as they made their way down the street. She couldn't prove to Michonne that she was capable of defending herself, of defending both of them, because she wasn't being given any sort of chance to do so.

She followed Michonne into what appeared to be some kind of outdoor supply store. The store was empty of Walkers except for two that were ambling about and lost their heads before they'd ever even become fully aware of the two women. Michonne led the way to an aisle, and apparently finding what she was looking for, stopped before some packs. She plucked one from the shelf and tossed it at Andrea. Andrea caught it.

"Get whatever you need," Michonne said. She took another.

Andrea wasn't really sure what she needed. It had been so much different in camp and on the farm. They'd stockpiled supplies, sending Glenn out for bulk of whatever they needed. She hadn't ever had to carry supplies in the manner that Michonne did, using Walkers as pack mules. She tried to get her mind into gear to think about all the possible things she would need. Michonne was ambling about packing her own bag that she'd selected.

Suddenly, Andrea became aware that Michonne was strapping her bag to the Walkers, apparently preparing to go, but Andrea hadn't finished.

"Where are you going?" She asked.

"I'm going to get food," Michonne said.

"Don't leave me, I'm almost done here," Andrea said.

"Finish up, you'll find me across the street, two stores down," Michonne commanded.

"You're not going to leave me here, are you?" Andrea asked.

Michonne just looked at her, apparently slightly annoyed. Andrea wished she hadn't asked the question, but she didn't want to be left. Losing her group had been traumatic enough. Now she didn't want to see this woman walking away, abandoning her here in this ghost town.

"You'll find me, getting food," Michonne said. She turned to go, tugging her pets after her.

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Michonne made sure to double everything she picked up. It was going to take some getting used to having to carry twice the food between stops that she normally did. The blonde wasn't in any frame of mind to think of all that she would need, so Michonne would have to think for both of them until she adjusted. She just hoped that the blonde adjusted soon.

She filled the sacks and secured them to the Walkers just as Andrea appeared in front of her, her sack slung over her shoulder. Michonne reached out for it and Andrea offered it up. It was full, but Michonne had no idea what the woman had chosen out of the store. She secured it to the back of one of the Dead that she was leading around and felt satisfied that they could move on now.

Michonne was anxious to get back into the woods, farther away from people, and start considering where they might make camp. If she could find a nice body of water somewhere nearby, she might even get to bathe, even though the water would be freezing with the dropping temperatures. If they were camping close enough, she thought, she could warm some water over the fire to wash herself down with, and she could boil some more to fill the canteens that were running low at this point.

If they were going to find such a promising location, especially before nightfall, they had to get a move on. She gave a swift tug to the Dead that were ambling behind her and led them and the blonde back out of the town and into the surrounding wooded areas.

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Andrea didn't know if it had been Michonne's plan, but the camp they had found was perfect. They were close enough to a spring that she could hear the slight rippling of the water. Michonne had started a fire and had boiled water, filling the canteens she'd hung around the pets who were now secured to a tree. She'd also warmed water for them to bathe.

Andrea had accepted the bath water a little shy. The camps that they'd stayed at before had offered little privacy, but she'd at least been able to bathe without anyone looking at her. Michonne hadn't offered to walk away, nor had she walked away to bathe herself. She had unashamedly stripped out of her clothes and quickly gone to washing herself, seemingly unaware of Andrea's presence.

Andrea didn't dare trail too far, though, since it was dark. In the firelight she also stripped off her clothes, trying to hide as much of herself as possible from Michonne, who was paying her little attention and didn't seem to mind whether or not Andrea could see her exposed body. Andrea tried to avert her eyes, but she was drawn to looking at the woman, for at least a moment.

In all her nudity, the woman wasn't quite the same intimidating figure that she was when she was clothed and armed, but her body was well built, and sculpted, no signs of starvation or missed meals. Andrea realized that this was a person who had done well for themselves since all this started, at least in the way of nutrition.

Andrea washed quickly and dressed in clean clothes that she had picked up at the outdoor supply store, noticing that Michonne had done the same. She wondered how the laundry worked around here, since it was clear that she didn't have Carol coming around to collect her dirty clothes. Michonne's only response to laundry so far had been to gather up their dirty clothes and pack them into one of the bags.

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"Here, eat," Michonne said, offering Andrea one of the heated cans of food and taking one for herself. She felt good. Baths always made her feel better, especially if she could have the water heated. Michonne was cold natured, and the dip in the temperatures wasn't something that she relished.

They ate in silence, just the way Michonne had hoped the meal would go. Maybe Andrea was learning that she didn't care much for chit chat. Before all this had happened she hadn't minded at all sharing a good laugh and some idle gossip with her friends, but it just seemed like now there wasn't a place for it. There wasn't room for chat in a world where only survival mattered. Besides, if they did chat now, the only topics available to them were their lives before all of this, or the tragedies that they'd suffered since. Neither of which was something Michonne wanted to discuss. Both dredged up memories she'd like to leave where they were, especially before she tried to sleep.

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As they were settling in to sleep, Andrea took her blanket from her bag and started looking for the most leaves that she could find to offer as some sort of cushion against the punishing ground. She had found a spot that didn't look extremely comfortable, but it was better in comparison to others.

She noticed Michonne unloading her things from the Walkers. She had a blanket and a sleeping bag. Andrea hadn't noticed her pluck that from the store, and she was silently cursing the fact that she hadn't thought to do the same thing.

"A sleeping bag, that's a good idea," Andrea said.

"Should have gotten one while we were out," Michonne said, arranging her bed.

Andrea thought about it a minute. That was far better than leaves, and she thought she might be able to sway her companion into sharing.

"You know, if you unzip that it would easily sleep two," she said. "We could share it as a mattress and cover ourselves with the blankets. Double the blankets would mean double the heat, not to mention the body heat," she offered.

Michonne was quiet for a minute, but she'd stopped arranging the bed. She was apparently considering Andrea's idea.

In response, Michonne began to unzip the sleeping bag. Andrea didn't move from her spot for a moment, studying the movements of the woman. When she'd laid it out flat, she looked at Andrea.

"Well, are you coming?" She asked. She lowered herself to the sleeping bag and Andrea smiled to herself. She got up and brought her blanket, lying down on the sleeping bag beside Michonne and helping to arrange the blankets on top of them. She was immediately thankful for the noticeable difference in comfort between the sleeping bag and the pile of leaves she'd been planning on sleeping on before. She had to admit, too, that her assertion about the heat provided by both blankets and the trapped body heat was true.

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Michonne was cold natured. She hated the cold. That was the only reason she'd decided to accept the blonde's proposal. She had to admit, though, that lying under the blankets, not inches from the blonde, _was_ warm. In fact, it was the warmest she'd been in a while and it made her instantly relaxed, renewing the feeling she'd enjoyed after the bath while she'd eaten her dinner. She felt herself growing sleepy and didn't try to fight the lull that was creeping over her. Maybe it had been a good thing that the blonde, _Andrea_, hadn't had enough foresight to scavenge a sleeping bag of her own.

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For a moment Andrea felt strange lying so close to the woman that hardly spoke a handful of words to her during the day. The sleeping bag, though, was comfortable, and the heat was more than enough to make her not pay attention to the chill seeping up through the sleeping bag from the damp earth below.

Andrea lie awake a few minutes, listening to the sounds around her. She could hear the familiar nature sounds of the surrounding woods, the occasional crackle of the low burning fire not far from them, the growling of the Walker pets that tailed them everywhere, and she could hear the steady and rhythmic breathing of the woman who had saved her life.

At least she knew that her mythical woman slept, and she trusted her enough to sleep only inches away from her. Andrea closed her eyes and drifted off, hoping for another night of sleep as deep as the one she'd had the night before.


	3. Chapter 3

**AN: Sorry that I'm moving slow in getting chapters out, but sometimes the muse cooperates more than it does at other times. Here we go, though, we're moving forward. For anyone still reading, let me know what you think. Our ladies have found their first camp. I hope you enjoy where we go from here. **

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Michonne woke slowly, taking in the morning. It was just before sunrise and she remained still a moment, savoring the warmth trapped under the blankets. The blonde woman had edged herself closer during the night and Michonne became aware that Andrea's arm was draped across her.

She didn't move for a moment, but finally the rumbling in her stomach made her anxious to get started with the day and get something to eat. She threw back the blanket and carefully moved Andrea's arm off of her body. The blonde didn't move. She was still sleeping. Michonne regarded her a moment. She decided that it had likely been a while since she'd rested so much.

Michonne got up, stretching her body against the stiffness that a night on the cold ground brought. She was anxious to find the place she was looking for, at least for the moment. She wanted a nice, secluded place not far from a town, somewhere to hold up for a little as the cold weather settled in.

That's how it had been so far, travel a decent distance, find a place to hunker down for a few days, a week, sometimes two if the location was good enough, and then continue on. The rhythm kept her going and kept her out of the way of others.

She'd seen other people, of course, but she preferred the solitude. People couldn't be trusted, and she knew that especially now they couldn't be trusted. The world had gone crazy. Everything had gone crazy. The dead had risen up to eat the living. Who would assume that in a world gone so mad anyone had maintained their sanity? She wasn't even sure of her own most of the time. In fact, she was sure that it wasn't what it once had been, even if she wasn't psychotic.

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Andrea woke to the crackling sound of the fire and the rustling noises of the Walkers that were chained nearby. She opened her eyes before she ever moved her body, aware that her travel companion was no longer sleeping with her. She sat up a little. Michonne was sitting just at the edge of the fire, apparently warming something in a tin can.

Whatever it was that was in the can would be breakfast, and Andrea wasn't going to complain. She was hungry. She lie there a moment, watching the woman that she knew so little about. She realized that had she encountered such a figure in the world before all of this, she'd have been terrified of her simply because so much about her was unknown. Now, though, it seemed different, and somehow Andrea couldn't bring herself to be afraid of the woman. If she'd have been a threat, if she'd been out to harm Andrea and nothing more, she'd have had more than ample opportunity to do so.

"What's for breakfast?" Andrea asked, attempting to sound as cheerful as possible, wondering if her companion was a morning person. It had been difficult so far to tell anything about her mood.

Michonne turned and regarded Andrea for a moment. Andrea sighed to herself, realizing that this would promise to be another silent day. She wasn't sure how long she could stand it before the lack of interaction drove her insane. They'd slept side by side for an entire night, and she couldn't get a word out of the woman.

"Oatmeal," Michonne said after a second. Andrea was surprised. She didn't even care about the answer that she'd received, it was simply hearing the other woman's voice that shocked her. "If you're getting up, you could pack that up," Michonne urged, going back to stirring the contents of the two cans.

Andrea quickly got up and started folding the two blankets that they had slept with. She found the pack on the ground not far from them and began stuffing the blankets into it. It was the first command that she'd received from Michonne and she hoped to show her that she was eager to work with her, eager to find her place with her. When the blankets were put away, Andrea silently zipped up the sleeping back and started rolling it up.

"We should get a tent," Andrea said suddenly.

"What?" Michonne responded.

Andrea smiled to herself. Maybe her companion _was_ a morning person.

"We should get a tent. If we're going to be sleeping outside, a tent could be nice for when it rains, or just to block the wind. Even better if it starts to snow, that does happen sometimes," Andrea said.

"I know it snows," Michonne snapped back. "I have a tent, and we're not going to be sleeping outside that much longer."

Andrea finished securing the rolled up sleeping bag. She came to the side of the fire and sat down, accepting one of the cans that Michonne offered her. She blew on the oatmeal.

"Where are we going?" Andrea asked. As long as she Michonne talking, she was going to take full advantage of the situation. She wasn't sure what time of day the woman turned into a pumpkin again and stopped talking, but she wanted to get as much out of her as possible before that happened.

Andrea took a bite of her oatmeal and then another. Michonne ate hers quickly, barely taking time to breathe between bites. Andrea waited patiently for the response to her question, but after a while began to give up hope. When Michonne finished her oatmeal, tossed the empty can that she'd cooked it in to the side, and packed her used spoon back into the bag, Andrea realized that the conversation was over. She quickly scarfed down the remaining contents of her own can as Michonne loaded down the chained Walkers to prepare for them to move forward.

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Michonne didn't know how to answer the blonde's questions about where they were going. She didn't know where they were going exactly, how was anyone supposed to know that? She knew that they were going to seek shelter when the time was right and the location afforded to them was a good one, but there was no telling when that would be and if they would stumble upon it today, tomorrow, or the day after. She'd just know when they'd arrived.

After that? Well, after that they'd continue when they had to in search of another stop, a halfway house of sorts. Is that what Andrea meant each time she pressured her to answer the same monotonous question about where they were going?

Or did she mean ultimately? Ultimately they were going to their graves, probably to rise again and destroy those who hadn't made it there yet if they were unlucky enough to get harmed by the Dead before they passed. Until then she had intended to make her way to the coast. Perhaps there she could find a way to get off of the mainland. Maybe there was an island somewhere where she could make a home.

Michonne didn't really know what she expected. The news hadn't offered any promising information about the plague or whatever it was that was upon them. There was nothing to make her think that anywhere was better than where she was, but she had convinced herself that if she kept going she'd eventually find something.

She didn't want to admit to the blonde, though, that any answer she gave her to her questions about where they were going would be unsatisfactory.

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Andrea was getting tired. They walked and walked, meeting only Walkers along the way, most of which didn't even pay them attention, but lost their heads regardless. Andrea had given up even thinking about the knife she wore. She didn't know why Michonne was concerned about her being too afraid to use it, odds were she wasn't going to get the chance unless they encountered a herd big enough that Michonne couldn't chop through them.

"You know, I get that you're not a big talker and all, and I hate to pressure you, but do you think you'll eventually talk to me?" Andrea asked. She was tired, but she thought she wouldn't be as tired if she had something to entertain her mind a little more as she followed her newly found ninja through the woods.

Andrea was quiet for a bit. Of course, there was no response.

"These Walkers of yours, they're great company," Andrea said. "Did you cut their jaws off so they couldn't bite you, or were you afraid they might expect some kind of conversation?"

She realized she was taking a chance by using sarcasm against the woman, but at this moment she really didn't care if the woman was mad at her, as long as she decided to speak to her.

"There's nothing to talk about," Michonne responded, not changing her pace. "I've got nothing to say to you, or to them."

"There's _everything_ to talk about," Andrea responded. "I don't know anything about you and you don't know anything about me. We're bound to at least get a good half hour of conversation out of that before we've exhausted all there is to know."

Michonne didn't respond to her. Andrea wasn't surprised, but she wasn't deterred either.

"Where were you when all of this started?" Andrea asked.

"I was at work," Michonne responded after a moment.

"I was on a car trip. I was taking my little sister, Amy, back to college," Andrea said. "Where did you work?"

There was no response and Andrea tried to decide for herself what she thought her travel companion had done for a living. She decided she had no practical ideas. She didn't know of anyone who employed ninjas, but perhaps the woman had been some sort of martial arts trainer.

"I was a law clerk," Andrea said.

There was still no response. Andrea sighed.

"Have you really been alone since this whole thing started?" Andrea asked. She had turned it over time and time again in her mind, but she couldn't imagine how anyone had been going for all this time without ever encountering another human being.

"I was alone," Michonne said, "until I saved your ass."

Andrea snickered.

"Fair enough," she said. "Thanks for that, by the way." Andrea paused for a moment. Since she'd found herself completely alone on the farm, all the vehicles gone and her only hope of survival being to flee, she'd been thinking about the fact that the others left her. They'd just left her alone, and she had to believe that some of them had survived. They'd taken the vehicles, after all, and she'd seen their taillights in the distance. _Some_ of them _had_ to have survived. She wondered now if they'd come back to look for her or if they'd abandoned her completely for dead. Her intention had been to try to make her way back to the highway, back to where they'd waited for Sophia, but she'd never made it there. A gnawing voice in her head made her wonder if they'd gone back there, made her wonder if they'd waited for her or looked for her, or had they just _left_.

"You could look for your group," Michonne said after a few minutes, snapping Andrea out of her thoughts.

"What?" Andrea asked, realizing for a moment that she was finally the one asking a question.

"Your group. If you wanted to, you could turn back, look for them," Michonne said.

Andrea wondered for a moment if the woman was trying to get rid of her or tell her that she needed to go. Andrea wasn't sure now that she wanted to find the group. If they had left her behind, if no one had come back for her, then why would she want to hunt them down? What were the odds that she'd find any of them anyhow? She didn't even know who was left now, and how whoever she encountered really felt about her.

"I don't think I'd find them," Andrea said. She didn't want to admit that she was having all these thoughts, not yet at least. She wasn't sure yet how the woman she was with would respond to them. "I'd rather stay with you, if that's OK," she said.

"I don't care," Michonne said.

Andrea thought about it. Normally she'd have been a little hurt at the nonchalant response of her travel companion. Once she thought about it, though, she couldn't really expect more than that from a woman that she didn't really know who had essentially pulled her from a pile of leaves in the woods. If Michonne had been alone this long, she really had no reason to care whether or not Andrea stayed with her.

Andrea decided to be quiet then. She didn't like the way this conversation was making her feel, and really she was the one doing most of the work for it. She might as well just let it die off.

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Michonne wandered along, slowly leading them closer to an area that she hoped would have some sort of residences. She had kept her orientation well enough to know that they weren't too far from the town that she couldn't easily return there for supplies, and they weren't too far from the water they'd found the night before for her to be able to provide water. Those were the most important elements for any temporary camp that she hoped to find. She could branch out and explore more once they had found a place that looked good.

They passed a few houses, places stuck outside of the city limits, but none of them quite looked like what Michonne wanted. She wasn't looking for Buckingham Palace by any means, but she also didn't like the idea of making their camp in of the termite infested shacks that she'd seen, well aware that a large enough group of Dead could easily overrun them there.

Michonne wasn't sure how to respond to Andrea, but it was evident to her now that the woman intended to stay with her. It felt odd to her for a moment to think that she would be travelling some time with her. Now she would have to accept the fact that she needed to shift her mentality from _I_ to _we_. Michonne could tell that the woman was bothered by the fact that her group had left her, and part of her was a little curious about this group. If the group had been so important to Andrea, why was it that they'd been forced to leave her alone in the woods? Michonne was sure that Andrea would continue to talk about them, she seemed the chatty type, and she almost hated to admit that she'd be curious to hear what she had to say.

Finally, Michonne saw what she had been waiting for. It was a farm house, but it looked to be nicely built and backed up close to the woods. She led Andrea and her pets toward it.

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Seeing the farmhouse ahead of them and noticing that Michonne seemed to be steering them straight toward it, Andrea grew curious.

"Michonne, what are we doing?" She asked. She hadn't been paying that much attention, but apparently they'd slowly been making their way to the edge of the wooded area they were traipsing through.

"We're making camp," Michonne answered.

"In that house?" Andrea asked.

"You see a better place?" Michonne responded.

Andrea didn't respond. Instead she followed along until they reached the house. Michonne chained the Walkers to the rail and mounted the porch steps, her hand on the handle of her katana. She peered in the windows.

"Looks empty, but be prepared, looks can be deceiving," Michonne said quietly. Andrea responded by grasping her knife in her hand.

Michonne opened the door and eased inside and Andrea followed close behind her. The house did appear to be abandoned. Slowly they checked the downstairs rooms, finding them all to be empty. Andrea was growing nervous. She wasn't used to finding empty houses, and she waited for a Walker to come lunging toward them at any moment. They made their way upstairs, and checking the rooms up there found them equally empty.

"Isn't that strange?" Andrea asked after they had both verified that the house was Walker free.

"Not really," Michonne responded. "These houses, the ones outside of the towns, they are empty a lot. People out here seemed more likely to move on, I don't know why. It's really the closer to town you get that you find more houses full of Walkers. It's like everyone went to town to die."

Michonne went down the stairs and Andrea followed behind her a little dumbstruck. Already Michonne had spoken more words inside this house than she had in the entire time they'd been travelling together. Could it be that she was putting her guard down a little? Andrea wondered if it had to do with her, or if it had to do with the fact that they'd found this house. Either way, she hoped it would last.

"I'll go get the supplies," Michonne said. "You start checking the house to see what we can use here. I hope that chimney means the fireplace works and the people living here didn't block it up."

Michonne turned at the bottom of the stairs and made her way out the door, leaving it propped open. Andrea headed toward the kitchen to find supplies. She hoped that there was enough to stay here for a few days. At least then, if the house was what was making Michonne chatty, she might have a chance to get to know a little more about her travel companion before they hit the road again and she closed herself off completely.


	4. Chapter 4

**AN: Sorry it has taken me so long to update here. I sort of lost my "feels" for a while there and it's taken me some time to get them back and to work out for myself exactly where I wanted the story to go. That being said, I feel that I should explain a few things. I'll apologize in advance for the long author's note, but I thought you might need to know these things before you decide if you wish to continue reading (especially now since I'm adding this story to my "schedule" for regular updates).**

1. I had difficulty with my feelings because I thought the character of Andrea was annoying. I feel that the writers didn't do a very good job with her characters. She was inconsistent (and more so than just a normal person) and it was hard to understand where she stood most of the time. At least that was my take on her. That means that I've figured out that the only way that I can write the story that I want to write is to do it by creating my own Andrea. Physically I'm basing her off Andrea on the show, but I don't claim her character to be that of television Andrea nor of comic Andrea. I am simply writing her as I would have liked her to have been written for the show. That means she may be unfamiliar to those of you who like people to stick very close to the characterization of the show. If that's going to bother you, then you might not care for this story.

2. I've decided that I am taking this story even more AU than I originally thought. Eventually our two heroines will encounter the Governor, and there's where the story will differ a little from the show (or perhaps a lot). I'm going to write the story to go a different way. Some events you know from the show will be included, some will be excluded, and some will be included but altered. I'm making it my own. That means that if you're going to be bothered by the fact that we're not following the show's storyline, then again this story will not be for you.

**For the rest of you, I hope you like my version of the story and the way it should have been. I'm excited about updating more regularly now that I have a better feeling for my characters and for where their story is going. **

**I hope you enjoy! Let me know what you think! Again, sorry for such a long delay! **

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They'd worked feverishly to cover the windows with any towels and blankets that they could find, and they'd barricaded the doors, all while trying to make as little noise as possible. When they finally felt like the house was as secure as it could be, Michonne had started a fire in the fireplace, having assured Andrea that it wasn't blocked.

They'd found a variety of food in the cabinet and Andrea felt like it was a smorgasbord. Over the fire they'd prepared a pot of soup and each of them had bottles of Gatorade and a can of fruit cocktail. Andrea felt like she hadn't eaten a feast like that since she'd been at the farm and the group had offered to cook a meal for Hershel and his family.

Michonne hadn't been one for conversation while they were eating, limiting herself throughout the evening to various commands. Now, though, Andrea hoped they could have some kind of conversation to ease the odd silence of the house. The place felt somewhat haunted, though they hadn't found any bodies there.

"How long do you think we'll stay here?" Andrea asked.

Michonne poked at the fire with the fire iron, balancing on her feet in front of it. When she was done, she slid the grate back in front of it and hung the iron back in the frame beside the fireplace. She sat back on the floor wrapping her arms around her knees. She turned her eyes toward Andrea.

"It's hard to say," she said. "Seems safe, but that doesn't mean anything. We'll need supplies."

"We could go out on a run," Andrea said. "It can't be that far from here to town, we could steal a truck, load it up and bring it back."

Michonne nodded.

"We have to be careful not to draw attention," Michonne said.

"Attention from who? Walkers?" Andrea asked. In the days that she'd been travelling with Michonne they'd run across their share of Walkers, and not once had she seen the woman even seem concerned. Andrea had been given very little chance to even kill any of them because of the speed and agility of her companion, therefore it didn't make any sense to her now to think that Michonne would be greatly concerned by the possibility of attracting a few more Walkers with the noise that a truck would cause, especially considering how much supplies they could theoretically obtain in one run.

Michonne shook her head a little, not speaking at first. Finally, she sighed and moved her body so that she was facing Andrea. Andrea took this as a sign that perhaps they were about to engage in a real conversation, the first since they'd begun this adventure.

"It's not the Walkers you have to be concerned with," Michonne said. "Walkers can be controlled. They're stupid. You're always smarter than they are."

"Then what are you afraid of, Michonne?" Andrea asked.

Michonne eyed her for a moment, not speaking, and Andrea thought that maybe the wording of her question could have been done differently. Perhaps "afraid" wasn't the word she wanted to use, and perhaps it offended the woman sitting near her who was finally beginning to open up a little.

"It's not about being afraid," Michonne said finally. "It's the people out there that you have to be concerned about. People were never as good as we gave them credit for being, and this world doesn't even make as much sense as it once did."

"So you don't trust people?" Andrea asked. She stretched her arms a moment, and then took the same position that Michonne had taken, hugging her knees to her chest.

Michonne didn't respond to this question. She cast her gaze back toward the low flickering flames in the fireplace and Andrea followed her gaze for a moment with her eyes.

"So you've been alone all this time," Andrea said. "Is it because you don't trust people? Or did something happen to you out there?"

"I don't need people," Michonne said frankly, skirting the question.

Andrea realized that this was going to be a touchy area with her new companion. For whatever reason she had firmly placed herself in the position of a loner, a difficult position to be in now that there were two of them that were cohabitating. Somehow this woman had been without a group all this time, or at least without any group that she was willing to speak of. Andrea believed, from what she could see in the flickering firelight, that there was an expression on the woman's face that showed that she wasn't perhaps telling the whole truth, but it was evident that she was telling all that she intended to tell for the moment.

"Yet you trusted me," Andrea said, growing a little annoyed at the thought that she was doomed trying to crack this riddle when she wasn't even being given any clues. "Why is that, Michonne? Why didn't you just leave me in the woods, if you're so sure that people need to be avoided, and that you don't need them?"

Michonne cut her eyes at Andrea.

"I don't need you," Michonne said. "I saved you because you were about to be dinner for some of the living dead. Don't mistake that for my weakness."

Andrea was taken aback by the tone and the words of the other woman for a moment. Though she could admit that her own question hadn't exactly been harmless, and perhaps she had ruffled her feathers a little, she didn't feel that she merited the tone of voice that was being given to her.

"You could have left me there," Andrea said. "Are you just some good Samaritan that goes around saving people from Walkers? Have you saved anyone else?"

"I didn't ask you to come with me," Michonne said. "You did that all on your own."

"So you wanted to leave me there?" Andrea asked.

Michonne didn't respond. She looked away again.

"The least you can do is talk to me," Andrea said, sighing. "Maybe if we talk this out we could understand each other better. If you tell me why you don't trust people, then maybe I can understand it. Maybe we can agree on an approach if we meet other survivors."

"I saved you because you needed to be saved," Michonne said. "You were going to die, and I didn't want that to happen. I didn't ask you to come, but when you followed, I let you stay with me."

"So you trusted me?" Andrea asked. Michonne chewed at her lip.

"I didn't say that," she replied.

"But you let me sleep at your camp, you gave me food. If you didn't trust me, why would you let me stay?" Andrea asked. She was determined, somehow, to arrive at some kind of understanding of the woman. If Michonne didn't want her around at all, then there was no reason for her to stay. She couldn't feel comfortable tagging along behind someone who saw her as something like an annoying kid sister who wouldn't go away. Then she'd just be worried that at some point the woman would disappear as mysteriously as she came. If she wasn't welcome, she'd rather leave on her own accord than be left somewhere without an explanation.

"I didn't think you were a threat," Michonne said.

"But you didn't want me with you?" Andrea asked, pushing just a little farther. She ignored the fact that Michonne was visibly growing annoyed. It was better for her to get annoyed now and get it out of the way than have it come as a surprise somewhere down the road.

"You can stay or you can go," Michonne said with some finality. "The choice is yours. I won't make you leave, but I won't beg you to stay."

"Do you want me to go?" Andrea asked.

Michonne looked as though she had no intention of answering Andrea's question and Andrea could feel the annoyance rising up in her. It was like trying to get a child to answer her, except this was a child that she couldn't pull rank on with age or relationship status.

"Answer me," Andrea said. "Do you want me to go? I can leave, you know. I can make it just fine on my own."

"Just like you were making it just fine when I found you?" Michonne responded.

Both women were quiet for a moment. Neither quite seemed to know how to respond to the other, what was the appropriate thing to say in the moment. Finally it was Michonne who sighed and spoke first.

"I don't want you to leave," she said, "but I won't beg you to stay. Whatever you decide, tomorrow I'm going into town for supplies, and you're welcome to come should you decide to stay."

"So we'll leave the pets here, then, and we'll go into town? Maybe steal a truck like I said before?" Andrea asked. She simply left it to be implied that she wasn't leaving under the current circumstances. She'd give this a trial run in hopes that as they continued to work together, she could perhaps pry more information out of Michonne and come to understand her better.

"We'll steal the truck if it looks safe," Michonne responded. "If it isn't, then we'll come back here for the pets to help carry more back. They can carry twice what we can on foot."

"And how will we know if it's safe, Michonne?" Andrea asked.

"If we don't see anyone, we'll take a truck," Michonne replied. "If there are camps in the area then we won't."

"There's strength in numbers, you know," Andrea said. "If we ran up with another camp, with a group even, we could join with them. The group that I was with was a pretty good size. We worked together. Everyone in the group worked to provide for the others. We protected each other."

"And they left you behind," Michonne said.

Andrea was stung momentarily by the comment and didn't respond. The truth was that it was a burning thought in her mind as to why they had left her behind and if any of them had even bothered to look for her or to consider the possibility of coming back for her. She wasn't ready, though, to lay bare her insecurities before a woman who seemed to be able to close herself off in an instant if it didn't suit her to show herself.

"I'm sure that they thought I was dead," Andrea said. "If they had any idea that I'd made it through the herd, they would have waited for me. They would have tried to save me. That's what group members do for each other."

Michonne snickered.

"We're all alone," she said. "The idea of depending on a group only gets you so far. In the end, it's always going to come down to self-preservation. They'll always leave you if they have to in order to survive. It's just human instinct."

"I don't believe that," Andrea responded. "I think that when we care about each other we don't turn our backs on one another. We look out for each other and that's how we stay alive. It's the only way to beat this thing."

Michonne chuckled, but she didn't respond immediately.

"It's a nice sentiment," Michonne said after a bit.

"And if we continue to travel together?" Andrea asked her cynical friend. "Are you going to turn your back on me?"

"Only as quickly as you'll turn yours," Michonne responded.

Andrea nodded slightly.

"Then I don't suppose we've got anything to worry about," she said. She watched Michonne, trying to gauge her reaction, but it wasn't possible. Her facial expression never changed.

"Guess not," she said.

"So tomorrow we go for supplies," Andrea said. "Then what?"

"We stay here for as long as we can. We try to ride out the winter if possible, but that's only going to work until there aren't more supplies, or until the area gets compromised by too many Walkers or by passing camps," Michonne responded. "We move on when we have to."

"So that's the plan? Stay while we can stay, run when we have to run?" Andrea asked.

"Have you got something better going?" Michonne asked.

Admittedly, Andrea had nothing. When she'd been with the group before the plan had always been to go somewhere. They'd had one destination or another. Some great prize waiting on the horizon. There was always the idea that they'd outrun this. Somehow they'd cross over the boundary into some mystical place where none of this was happening anymore and they'd be safe. Perhaps they'd even return to life as they knew it before…if it was even possible to return to a life like that after all they'd suffered and all they'd seen.

"No," she said quietly.

They sat in silence a little longer and slowly the fire before them began to burn down to ash. Michonne made no move to renew the fire. When it was barely a glowing pile of ashes she stretched her legs out.

"Let's get some sleep," she said. "We have a lot to do tomorrow. We need to be rested."

Andrea looked around the room they were in. She'd paid it very little attention before, but with the quickly dying light she searched it out. There was a couch which looked to be very old, and a few straight back chairs.

"Are we sleeping _here_?" Andrea asked. She knew that upstairs the house had beds, and though they might not be the most comfortable beds in the world, they were probably much more comfortable than the couch or the floor. Michonne was already up and opening the sleeping bag that she carried, which was a type of answer all its own to Andrea.

"You can sleep where you want," Michonne said. "You should probably sleep upstairs. It would be safer up there. I'm going to stay close to the fire and make sure that it doesn't get out at all during the night. The last thing we want is to burn in our sleep."

"So you want me to go upstairs and sleep alone?" Andrea asked. With the darkness closing in around her, she was beginning to feel uncomfortable in the house. It was old and damp and if she'd ever been anywhere that felt haunted before, she certainly felt like this place was. It was a little strange to her, considering that she'd never believed in ghosts before, and she'd certainly never been afraid of the dark.

"Or you can sleep down here, suit yourself," Michonne said. She unrolled the sleeping bag on the couch.

"On the floor?" Andrea asked. Michonne responded by moving the sleeping bag to the floor.

"There, you can have the couch," Michonne said, a touch of annoyance in her voice.

Andrea looked at the couch and considered it a moment, watching Michonne lie down on the sleeping bag that had been serving as their mattress. Finally, she got up and started up the creaking stairs, feeling her way in the darkness as she waited for her eyes to adjust to the lack of light.

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Michonne curled up on top of the sleeping bag and pulled one of the old blankets she carried on top of her. The carpeted floor wasn't the most comfortable bed she'd ever slept on, but it was far superior to the ground she'd been sleeping on.

Andrea had been full of questions and had been especially prying this evening. Michonne was finally glad to have the excuse that that they needed to sleep before their run the next day. She didn't want to continue discussing her beliefs nor her experiences with the blonde. She knew how people could be. She'd seen so many people, even before this happened, that had seemed to be good people yet who had the capacity to be so terrible. Now that the world was gone mad, she certainly didn't believe that she needed to take the chance of surrounding herself with people like that and landing in a bed of vipers.

There were enough threats out there now with just the animated corpses set on eating the living, there was no need to add to it the threat of people who were also set on eating the living, even if their appetites were purely figurative.

Michonne heard a noise upstairs and assumed that Andrea had gone to find herself the bed that she found most appealing. In all of the houses that Michonne had stayed in during her travels, she'd never slept in the bedrooms of any of them. As inviting as the bedrooms may seem, when you were alone in them was when you were most aware that this house had once been more than just a structure meant to keep out the elements, Walkers, and other survivors. The house had once been a home to someone, and the bedrooms had stories to tell. They were stories that Michonne didn't care to hear at night while she was trying to sleep. In the living rooms she always felt better. At least those were spaces meant for guests, and that's what she was essentially, a guest.

A series of thumping noises followed by several thuds in the stairwell made Michonne sit up a little.

"Andrea? Are you OK?" She asked, becoming concerned that it might not be the blonde making the noises, though she had no idea who else could be to blame for it. They'd made sure the house was secure enough that nothing and no one was getting in unnoticed.

Andrea appeared a moment later pushing a mattress on its side through the living room door. She let it fall square in the center of the living room and then stood there with her hands on her hips. Michonne could barely make her out in the dying firelight.

"I'm not sleeping on some dead person's haunted couch," Andrea said.

Michonne chuckled in spite of herself.

"It's more than big enough for two," Andrea said. "We might as well spread the sleeping bag on top of it and then both of us can get a decent night's sleep."

"You'd rather sleep on some dead person's haunted mattress?" Michonne asked, not moving from her nest.

Andrea sighed.

"Great! Now you've got to sleep with me," she said. "I didn't even think about that."

"Just go to sleep," Michonne said.

"Can't," Andrea said. "Not now, not alone. This house is creepy and you can't tell me that you don't think it's just a little creepy."

Michonne listened to the woman. Perhaps she wasn't as accustomed to camping out in houses where people who were now unaccounted for, and at times where they were still dwelling, just as the animated dead, had once lived. She didn't know much about her life with the group that she had before aside from the few stories she'd told while they were walking and she'd grown annoyed with Michonne's lack of desire for conversation. Michonne sighed and climbed out of the blankets. As soon as she was on her feet, Andrea took hold of the sleeping bag and began unzipping it across the mattress.

"I'll be right back," Andrea said. "Go ahead and get the blankets."

Michonne did just that. She was tired and anxious to get some sleep, and though she hated to admit it, the idea of sleeping on a mattress was more exciting than most anything she'd done in some time. Andrea reappeared a few minutes later carrying some pillows. She tossed one at Michonne who was already lying on the mattress, the blankets thrown over her.

"Pillows too?" Michonne asked.

"I took the pillowcases off," Andrea said. "I don't know why, but I didn't feel right using any of their linens. Maybe we could get some of our own when we go into town tomorrow."

Michonne couldn't really imagine stealing pillowcases and sheets, since she'd never done it before, but she supposed that it couldn't hurt anything, and she would feel somewhat strange sleeping on the sheets that had been owned by the people that lived there.

"Fine," Michonne said finally, "just go to sleep."

Andrea took her spot on the bed and lie there quietly a minute. Michonne was beginning to doze off when she heard a snicker come from Andrea.

"What?" She asked.

"That's your side," Andrea said.

"What?" Michonne asked, not knowing what Andrea was on about and wishing that she'd quiet down for once and for all.

"That's your side," Andrea said. "Whether it's a mattress or a pile of leaves, you always sleep on the same side. You have a side."

"Everybody has a side," Michonne said. "Don't you?"

"Not really," Andrea said. "I never slept with anyone long enough to have a side. I guess I have one now, though."

Michonne didn't respond and her companion grew quiet. She closed her eyes, savoring for a moment the softness of the mattress below her. She wasn't positive how this was going to work out, but it looked like she was going to have the opportunity to find out.


	5. Chapter 5

Michonne woke up early. Despite the hour, she imagined it would be dark most of the time in the house as long as the fire wasn't burning. She decided that today they would look for candles and oil lamps, anything to provide a dim light for the house. Living entirely in the dark would be depressing, but anything too bright would defeat the purpose of having covered the windows in the first place. They didn't need a herd of the Dead finding them.

She got out of the bed, and immediately dressed. The blonde was still stretched out, lost in sleep. Michonne didn't want to wake her until she had to, knowing full well that as soon as Andrea was awaked she'd want to begin talking, and Michonne didn't feel like starting to deflect her prying so early in the morning.

Michonne stepped cautiously outside the house, careful not to make any noise that might wake Andrea. She wanted to move her pets farther from the house than they were so that no passing Dead, or worse, a heard of passing Dead, would notice the pets lingering too long at the house and think they'd found something of interest there. She glanced around, finding the coast clear, and slipped off the porch. She unchained the pets and led them as quietly as she could off to the side and chained them to a tree.

Michonne wandered a little around the house and realized there was a small barn nearby, most likely a storage barn of some sort, and there was a shed backed up and attached to the house. She glanced in the shed for a second, not really examining the contents. She hadn't noticed the structures when they'd first found the house, but they would be worth checking out after their run.

When Michonne got back in the house, Andrea was awake and sitting on the floor sorting through canned goods in such a manner that it almost looked like she was playing some kind of game. When Michonne closed the door Andrea's head snapped up.

"You came back," Andrea said. "I peeked outside, the pets were gone."

Michonne stared at her a minute. Apparently Andrea was under the impression that she had some intention of ditching her at the house and disappearing. Though she may not have planned to travel with her originally, she wasn't going to simply leave the woman without any warning.

"I just moved them," Michonne said. "The…_Walkers_…they seem to watch each other. One Walker lingering too long in the same place draws attention. Makes the others think it's found something. They bunch around it, trying to find whatever it's got to eat. I didn't want them drawing attention to the house."

Michonne could see Andrea's shoulders visibly relax despite the dimness of the room.

"Oh," she said. "Do you want breakfast?"

Michonne nodded and walked into the room to join Andrea on the floor.

"We've got granola bars and some more Gatorade," Andrea said. "I thought maybe we should save that to eat on the run. We don't know how long it'll take us to find something. There's fruit here, and some graham crackers, but they're pretty hard."

Michonne reached out and took the plastic wrapper of crackers from Andrea. She busted the pack open and put it on the floor between them, testing one of the crackers with her teeth.

"Nothing that soaking them in the juice from the fruit won't help," she said. Andrea shrugged her shoulders a little and passed Michonne a can of fruit and a spoon. She peeled the top off her own can and immediately crumbled one of the crackers into the can.

"I guess it's the same idea as granola, right?" Andrea asked.

"For the end of the world, it is," Michonne said.

"How did you sleep?" Andrea asked. She started crumbling a second cracker into her can, obviously not satisfied that one would be enough. Michonne followed suit, crumbling one of the stale crackers into the juice of her own fruit.

The truth was she'd slept better last night than she probably had since any of this started. She didn't really want to admit it, but there'd been something comforting, something she hadn't even expected, from sleeping curled up next to the blonde. It made it an even better night's sleep when you threw in the fact that it was her first night on a mattress since before she'd seen her first snapping, snarling, animated corpse.

"Pretty good," she responded. She'd keep the flowery speeches for herself. She wasn't entirely sure yet how close she wanted to get to Andrea. These days getting close to someone could mean just setting yourself up for heartache. In a flash they could be gone. If you kept your distance you were much less likely to get hurt. Besides, they may very well run into Andrea's group any day now and Michonne had no false hope that the blonde felt any real allegiance to her. She considered the group her family, albeit adopted and somewhat imperfect, and Michonne didn't doubt that she would return to them without any hesitation at all if they were present and accounted for.

Andrea nodded her head a little and spooned some of the contents of her can into her mouth, chewing thoughtfully. When she swallowed, she tipped her head to the side.

"So do we know where we're going on this run, or are we just going and hoping for the best?" Andrea asked.

Michonne sighed. Andrea always had questions and she felt like she, for whatever reason, thought Michonne was going to be capable of answering all of them. The truth was that Michonne didn't feel equipped to answer hardly any of them. Perhaps her other group had always known what they were doing, perhaps someone there had always had an answer, but Michonne had simply been muddling her way through this. She'd been going on instinct. It had worked for her, and hopefully it would continue to work for her, but it wasn't something that provided her with any of the more complicated answers to life's questions.

"We're just going," Michonne said. "Listen, if you're going to stay with me, then you're going to have to stop asking me so many questions. I don't have the answers that you want. We know we need supplies, so we're going to go out and find it. When we move on, we know we need somewhere safe to go, so that's what we find. I don't have a master plan. We're not on some route drawn out on a map inside my head or anything."

Andrea looked struck for a moment and turned her attention entirely to her fruit. Michonne felt a little sorry for the snappiness of her voice, but she wasn't going to continue on feeling inadequate because she couldn't answer some slew of questions. It wasn't exactly like Andrea had been offering up a bunch of advice.

"So we're going to get supplies," Andrea said softly after a moment. She spooned more of the fruit into her mouth and chewed. She waited and then spoke around what was left of the bite. "What else do you normally do when you've found somewhere new to stay?"

"We've got to find water," Michonne said. "I've been travelling in this direction for a while. There's a pretty steady set of streams and creeks, all branching from the same river. I'm hoping that it hasn't run out and if we go just a little into the woods we'll run back into it."

"The one we bathed in the other night?" Andrea asked.

Michonne finished her fruit and raked the soggy cracker mush into her mouth. The texture was far from pleasant, but at least it was filling enough to fight off the gnawing in her stomach.

"That's the one," she said.

"Anything else?" Andrea asked.

Michonne shrugged.

"We do what we need to do. It's easier to figure out what you need when you realize you need it," she replied. She sat there for a moment thinking about the structures she'd found outside. "When I moved the boys I noticed there's a little storage barn or something out back, and there's some kind of shed. We need to check that out too. I've run into a couple of houses out here where the people were some kind of survivalists or something. Sometimes they'd just have a lot of stuff stockpiled, like they knew this was coming or something."

Michonne got up from the floor and tossed the sticky fruit can into the bag where they were piling up their trash.

"Get your bag ready," Michonne said. "We need to head out soon if we want to take advantage of the day."

Andrea got up and emptied most of the contents out of her bag. They wouldn't need much more than something to eat on a run like this. Water, a little food, the rest they would get while they were out. By the time that Andrea was ready, Michonne already had her bag thrown over her shoulder.

"Got your knife?" Michonne asked. She normally wasn't concerned about the Walker population, as Andrea called the ambling Dead, but as long as they were going out on a run they might as well optimize their resources, and that could be better done if they could split up in clearer areas.

Andrea patted her leg where her knife hung.

"All set," she said, smiling at Michonne. "Let's go."

Michonne led the way out the house. The coast was clear when they stepped off the porch and headed through the woods. Michonne wasn't positive where they were, but she had a pretty good sense of direction, and that coupled with the pretty predictable landscape of Georgia, made her pretty sure that she could lead them right into a town. Her only hope was that it wouldn't be one that was either crawling with Walkers or picked to death by other passing groups.

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Andrea was amazed at how few Walkers they'd seen on their trip. Now that they were nearing the small department store of whatever ghost town they had stumbled into, though, she started to get nervous. The place looked fairly abandoned by Walkers and people alike, but the sight of the store ahead reminded her too much of the time they'd been trapped in Atlanta. The day that Rick had joined their group. Though it was much smaller and one story, there was something about it that tripped the memory. She tried to hold back her nerves, not wanting Michonne to know that things like this bothered her. She didn't imagine that much shook Michonne up and the last thing she wanted was to come across as some kind of scaredy cat that couldn't be depended on during a run for the things that they would need to stay alive. She wasn't going to have the woman thinking that she was going to have to take care of her.

"If it hasn't been picked over," Michonne said, walking steadily in the direction of the looming building, "then we're bound to find a lot of what we need."

"We should look for a van or a truck first," Andrea said. "That way we know exactly how much we can carry."

Michonne looked at her for a moment and then nodded.

"I think we should be able to find our way back to the house using the roads," Michonne said. "I didn't pay too much attention to road names, though."

Their shortcut through the woods _would_ make it a little more difficult to find the house while driving a vehicle that wasn't able to go straight the way they'd come, but Andrea had been paying attention every time they got close enough to any kind of road sign that she could read. She'd suspected that Michonne wouldn't be paying attention to those things. She was obviously accustomed to travelling on foot and slipping through the trees. Andrea had wanted to pay particular attention to such things in hopes that it might earn her some sort of reputation as useful.

"I was watching," she said. "I'm pretty sure that I can get us back without a problem. Might get a little turned around once we hit the back roads, but I doubt it'll set us back much time, and it's already going to be faster going back than it was coming since we won't be on foot."

Michonne nodded her head at her and for a moment Andrea thought she saw something of approval in the woman's eyes. Perhaps she'd done well. Michonne's respect was likely to be something earned by proving your worth. Andrea couldn't, at this point, think of anything else that might be important to the woman.

They wandered around the parking lot and circled around behind the store. In the back there were a number of Walkers ambling about, at least half a dozen. Andrea pulled her knife but waited, suspecting that Michonne would simply swipe through them quickly without giving her a chance to show that she could protect them if need be. Just as she suspected, Michonne beheaded the Walkers without even batting an eye.

"What kind of truck do you want?" Michonne asked.

Andrea stopped for a minute. She'd suggested a truck or a van, but hadn't realized that Michonne now viewed this as her position. She looked around and considered them. She couldn't drive anything too large, but there were a few smaller delivery trucks that looked as though they might hold a good deal of stuff without causing any added difficulty to drive than a regular truck. Andrea walked over to one of them and opened the back. The truck was empty. She passed around to the driver's side door and flung it open, stepping back in case there was a Walker lurking inside. When she found it empty she climbed inside. There weren't any keys. Immediately she took to hotwiring the vehicle.

"What are you doing?" Michonne asked.

"I'm hotwiring it," Andrea responded. "We can park it in front, make it easier to load. I don't think we'll get a parking ticket, do you?"

"Where'd you learn to do that?" Michonne asked.

Andrea smiled to herself remembering a boyfriend of hers from high school. He'd been the kind of guy that drove her parents crazy, but he was wild and exciting. She'd loved the idea of being with him far more than she'd ever really cared about him. He'd gotten into trouble a few times, and one of his specialties was hotwiring cars. She'd asked him to teach her merely for curiosity's sake. She never imagined back then that she'd be using the skill to impress some kind of sullen ninja that had now become her one and only companion.

"An old boyfriend taught me in high school," Andrea said. "I never needed it until now."

"Thank goodness for simple things," Michonne responded.

When the truck roared to life, Andrea silently congratulated herself.

"We're in business," she said. She climbed into the seat and closed the door of the truck. She drove around front and parked it just in front of the large doors to the store. Michonne, who was walking around the store, had stopped to kill a Walker that was coming to investigate the sound of the engine. Andrea shut off the truck and dropped out of it. Michonne caught up to her and they turned to go inside and begin collecting the supplies that would fill their stolen truck.

Andrea followed Michonne into the department store. The ground floor door was broken out and they stepped through it, avoiding the glass. Almost immediately they were greeted by a Walker, but Michonne nonchalantly put the thing down before it hardly had time to startle them. Inside the place remained fairly quiet and abandoned.

"Do you want to split up?" Michonne asked.

Andrea really didn't want to split up at all. The store was large, and they could cover a lot of ground that way and get more things that they needed, but it also meant that they would have a harder time finding each other in the event that they ran into trouble. However, she could tell that Michonne liked to be as efficient as possible.

"We can," Andrea said, hesitantly.

"Fine," Michonne said. "I'm going to go straight and see what I can find in the way of camping gear, candles, and things like that."

"I'll look for food and a few other little odds and ends," Andrea offered. "I doubt there's too much here in the way of food, but we can find a grocery store when we leave here. Do we meet by the truck, or what?

Michonne stood there a minute, obviously considering it. Andrea could tell that she'd never had to orchestrate a run that took place with more than one person. Finally Michonne nodded.

"Take what you can back to the truck, but be careful. Yell if you run into trouble. I'll find you," she said.

Andrea nodded. The department store wasn't too terribly large, but it was large enough that Andrea wasn't positive that they could hear each other. Still, she didn't want to be the one to bring up the possible problems in the plan, so she started in the other direction.

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When Michonne came out of the store carrying the final load of things that she thought would be useful, she found Andrea sitting on the back of the truck swinging her legs. There were a number of Walkers lying on the ground in the surrounding area, so she figured that Andrea might have been out there for a bit.

"Run into trouble?" Michonne asked, sliding the box into the back with the others.

"No," Andrea said, shaking her head. "It was taking you a while, though, I was starting to think I might need to go and look for you."

"I can take care of myself," Michonne said. "You didn't see anyone, did you?"

Andrea shook her head.

"No one alive," she responded. "I saw quite a few of these guys." She motioned toward the stilled Walkers with her knife. "Why? Did you see anyone?"

"No," Michonne said. "I did see some evidence that we weren't the first ones here, though. Someone's been camping out in there."

"Well, they're gone now," Andrea said, hopping down off the back of the truck. She pulled the door of the truck shut and turned to face Michonne. "There wasn't much in the way of food there. We need to go now, find a grocery store or something."

"We need to find a pharmacy too," Michonne said. "See what we can get. You never know what you're going to need."

Andrea smiled and nodded. Michonne thought the blonde looked happier right now than she had since she'd found her in the woods. Apparently runs were her thing. Michonne supposed that wasn't a bad thing, since they'd already collected more this run than she normally got in several. Andrea went around and began to hotwire the truck again. Michonne made her way to the passenger side. She decided she'd give Andrea her chance to shine on the run. She knew what they needed now, so she might as well see what happened when the woman was left in charge for a change.

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Andrea felt exhilarated as they drove back toward the house. The grocery store had been raided, but there was still a lot of food to be had and they'd packed up most of what they could use. She didn't doubt that they had enough food in the back of the truck to hold them for a month's time at least. If they found water they might not even have a reason to go back to town. The pharmacy hadn't yielded much, but they had gotten some basics like some gentle pain killers, bandages, and the like.

She didn't know what all they might need, this was a new type of life for her, but there was something comforting about knowing that just the two of them had pulled off a run of this size that yielded such a payday.

She was also feeling a bit more confident about her role with Michonne. Michonne had let her take the lead in the grocery store as well as in the pharmacy. She'd backed down a little when they'd come face to face with a few Walkers in the grocery store and let Andrea rush forward, burying her knife into the heads of all of them. Andrea had known, of course, that the woman was just behind her and ready to strike if the need be, but the just the fact that she hadn't done it immediately made her feel like perhaps Michonne was going to give her the chance to be an equal and not just some problematic kid sister that tagged around on her heels.

Andrea had picked up a few goodies for the in the department store that Michonne knew nothing about. She was excited about revealing them when they unpacked the truck. She didn't know how MIchonne felt about any kind of luxury in their surroundings, but she figured that they were there and they were free, so they might as well take advantage of them.

All that remained now was to find their way back to the house, which Andrea was fairly certain wasn't going to be problematic at all, to locate water, which Michonne seemed to think would be a fairly simple task, and to unload the truck of their spoils.

As Andrea drove down the road, checking her surroundings to make sure that everything continued to match what she'd noticed as they crossed roads in their earlier trip on foot, she noticed that the sun was beginning to lower itself in the sky. It had been a good day, and she'd hardly thought of her old friends at all. She hoped, now, that wherever they were they were safe, and hopefully they had the same positive prospects for the upcoming winter that she felt that she had now. She glanced out of the corner of her eye at Michonne. The woman sat back in her seat, one foot propped on the dash in front of her, staring straight ahead out of the wind shied.

She didn't look as threatening as she once had, not anymore. She was simply a woman that had been navigating this world alone, and from being alone she had developed the kind of skin that one must naturally develop from not having anyone to depend on but oneself. Andrea felt, for a moment, that she could understand that. She'd begun to come to terms with the fact that her fate would be the same when she'd been running through the woods feeling abandoned by the group.

Now, however, she didn't feel alone. Maybe they didn't need a group after all. Maybe they'd be just fine on their own. Andrea could only hope that, in time, Michonne would feel that she wasn't alone anymore. Andrea thought that maybe it was something that she'd have to adjust to, a mindset that would have to be changed, but she felt that she could be patient enough to wait the woman out. She knew that being too forceful could work against her, causing the woman to close up entirely into herself, but a little gentle prodding along the way could perhaps bring her out into the open.

"We'll be there soon," Andrea said. "I remember this road. Keep your eyes peeled for a small side road, should be off to the left. It had a blue sign that was the name of some kind of tree. That should take us directly back to the driveway that led down to the house."

Michonne mumbled something from the passenger seat and Andrea turned. The woman sat up, now looking with more intent out the windshield. Andrea smiled slightly to herself and focused her own intent on finding the sign that would guide them back.


	6. Chapter 6

"What is all this anyway?" Michonne asked, carrying another box into the house and shouldering past Andrea as she moved toward some of the back rooms of the downstairs level that they were using as storage.

"Does it really matter?" Andrea asked, slipping out the door to get another box out the truck without waiting on Michonne's response.

Andrea was feeling good. They'd found the house without any difficulty after their run and now the truck was nearly unloaded. They'd designated pretty much every space in the house as being open for storage except the living room which was currently serving as their kitchen, bedroom, living space, and anything else they needed it for.

Once upon a time, Andrea remembered entertaining the thought of how different life must have been before all their modern commodities. This had been, of course, when she thought that life wouldn't go on without all the things that they needed to be _comfortable_. Now those times seemed ridiculous. She could hardly believe that before the madness began she, like so many other people, had lived surrounded by so much _stuff_ that she thought was necessary. Now even houses like this one seemed a little ridiculous. Unless the family that lived here had been rather large, she couldn't remember why it was necessary to have so much space.

When she'd first begun to camp with the group outside of Atlanta, just when life had been flipped upside down, it had been difficult to get used to the fact that everyone was in such close quarters. Andrea remembered feeling suffocated, overwhelmed by the constant presence of _bodies_. At every turn it seemed someone was there and the concept of privacy had taken on a whole new meaning. Then, when they'd moved to the farm, things had become progressively more confined. The spaces grew smaller and smaller. The distances between them, emotionally and physically, had lessened.

Now, with Michonne, things were even more drastic. At first there had been some sort of physical distance between them established in their camps, though it was clear that privacy was defined differently for Michonne than it was for Andrea. Michonne was emotionally private. She liked more to keep her thoughts to herself, but she'd had absolutely no physical privacy. Modesty wasn't a word that could be used to describe her in any way. She was not ashamed of her nudity, and she didn't she offer to cover herself at all when in Andrea's presence. At first, that had thrown Andrea. Even in the camps with the others there had been a degree of modesty, and even when safety dictated they bathe in close spaces, there had been the silent agreement that no one would flaunt themselves, nor would they study the others.

And at first, Andrea had felt embarrassed with Michonne, but she had quickly gotten over the feeling. She'd actually, much to her own shame, found herself studying Michonne, though she hadn't caught the woman looking at her. She excused herself, however, saying that it was natural to look when confronted with someone else's nudity because of the novelty placed upon it by the society in which she'd spent most of her life. She even excused her lingering glances with the thought that she was merely admiring the physique of the mysterious woman. Her body was toned and shaped in such a way that Andrea thought that it begged to be admired, from an artistic standpoint, of course.

Now that the hurdle, however, of nudity and constant close proximity had been one that Andrea had leapt, she realized that she _enjoyed_ the nearness of her new companion. She'd even been the one to suggest that they begin sleeping together. She'd suggested it in the interest, of course, of sharing body heat and the comfort of the one sleeping bag, but she also enjoyed the feeling of safety that the closeness brought.

In fact, she'd become so accustomed to the presence of her ninja friend since they'd joined up in the woods, that now Andrea realized she didn't care for the feeling of being away from her. For their time in town and during the few hours that they'd spent slowly unloading the truck since they got back from town, Andrea found that she disliked the moments when they were at their greatest distances, searching out supplies or carrying boxes, and that she enjoyed the seconds spent passing each other on trips back and forth from the truck to the storage rooms.

Andrea heaved up the last of the boxes out of the back of the truck and started up the steps into the house with it. She gently kicked the door closed behind her and glanced into the living room as she passed. Michonne was sitting on her knees in front of the fireplace, no doubt trying to start a fire to throw together some sort of dinner for the two of them. They could eat their fill tonight. There was more than enough food to last them for a good while.

Andrea carried the box through to one of the rooms that was serving as a storage room for them. A quick glance around the room revealed that it had once been some sort of game room, or perhaps a man cave of sorts. Worthless electronics were homed in the room that now held their food and the other odds and ends that they'd collected in town and would likely spend the next few days sorting through. Andrea looked around, nosing through the boxes that she'd packed specially, in search of a few items of particular interest.

While on the run, one thought in particular had struck Andrea. She realized that while on the run she was being given a chance to prove herself to Michonne. In some way or another the woman was allowing her to show that she had a place with her, that she was a worthy companion. Andrea was grateful for the chance, and she felt that she'd done a good job. That feeling helped her to feel a little more secure in the idea that the woman was not likely to leave her. She'd been worried before, that was true, but now she was comfortable believing that Michonne may not have intended to share her company, but now that she had it she was not likely to simply abandon her somewhere.

It was, however, after that realization, that Andrea had another thought. It was a thought that struck her as odd, and one that she couldn't explain, but she'd taken action against it. The thought was that, now that they'd found the house that offered them the luxury of a protected fireplace, Michonne might realize that they didn't _need_ to share the same bed. She might decide that there was plenty of room in their living space for separate mattresses, and the availability of other mattresses upstairs would mean that it was possible for them both to have equally comfortable places to lie. The fireplace could also diminish the importance of sharing body heat, since it could easily make it comfortable to sleep separately.

Andrea was surprised that when she thought of this, she realized that she didn't want that to happen. She _liked_ sleeping with Michonne, and she _liked_ how safe she felt only inches from the woman. That had led her to go on a special quest while searching out items to create a nest, of sorts, that would be the most comfortable bed that she could fashion. She thought, however simply, that if she could create a bed that was irresistibly comfortable, then Michonne wouldn't consider, even for a moment, relinquishing her spot there to put distance between them and occupy a less appealing mattress elsewhere in the room.

Andrea drug all of her spoils out of the cardboard boxes that she'd packed them into. Her arms full, she heaved the items up, catching the ones that threatened to spill out, and made her way back to the living area, dropping everything onto the mattress there and beginning to assemble her nest.

"What are you doing?" Michonne asked, crawling across the floor toward a box of food that she had placed there.

"Making the bed," Andrea said, nonchalantly.

"I thought it was made," Michonne responded.

Andrea smiled over her shoulder. Apparently the run today, and perhaps Michonne's growing confidence in her, had brought the woman out of her shell a bit. It appeared that Andrea was going to at least engage her in some kind of idle conversation.

"It was, but I'm making it better," Andrea said. "You'll see. Don't worry about it."

"I thought we went for supplies," Michonne said.

"And we got supplies," Andrea responded. "There's nothing wrong with a little luxury when you can have it, though, and everything I got today was at a killer price."

There was no response except the clanking of a metal utensil inside of a pot. Andrea turned her entire focus on building the dream bed that she'd imagined in her mind and left Michonne to preparing the meal.

Andrea would have hated to explain to her old self, or even to her rational self, why this was so important to her, but it was, even if she didn't entirely understand it. Perhaps, she thought, on some deep psychological level the group leaving her had stirred up some deeply buried abandonment issues, or maybe it wasn't anything so serious, but all she knew at this point was that any closeness she felt to Michonne was something she wanted to hang onto, and she hoped to gain more in the future.

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After they'd finished eating, Michonne watched as Andrea spread out the map that she'd gotten while they were in town. They both hovered over it in the dimly lit living room, their foreheads almost touching as they studied it from different sides of the creased paper.

"See, this is where we lost Sophia," Andrea said, drawing a circle on the map with a marker. "Around here, this is where the farm was, and that means that here, in this area is where you found me. This water, this must be the creeks that you've been following, and hopefully the ones that we'll find tomorrow when we go looking for water."

"Which town were we in today?" Michonne asked, trying to read the map upside down.

"This one," Andrea said, putting her finger over the spot where the town was marked on the map. "So if we stay here for a while we can clear out these towns, they shouldn't be too far to go, and when we leave here we could still follow the creek line a little further."

"Sounds fine to me," Michonne said. "It's just the same scenery over and over."

Andrea moved away from the map then and sat back on her feet on the floor. Michonne sat up to, the map lying between them like some kind of barrier.

"Where do you think we'll end up? I mean I know you don't know, but do we have a destination?" Andrea asked.

Michonne shrugged.

"The coast? At least there we've just got land on one side of us. We don't have to be on guard against Walkers from every direction we turn," Michonne said.

Michonne watched Andrea in the flickering light. The blonde gazed off at the ceiling for a moment. She was obviously daydreaming, but Michonne didn't know if she was thinking about the future or remembering the past. Both looked the same across someone's features.

"So what, Michonne?" Andrea asked after a second, turning her gaze back on Michonne. "We just live by the sea? Sounds more like a poem than reality."

Michonne didn't know how to respond. No matter what they tried to call a plan for the future, Michonne had a hard time believing that anything could be realistic or reasonable. She had a hard time believing there was any real hope for a future right now. The world seemed too bleak. It seemed like anything they could hope for would be nothing more than a daydream.

"If we found boats," Michonne said, "then we could find an island. Even if it was overrun with Walkers, once we got them cleared out then they wouldn't be able to repopulate. I don't suppose they could swim that far, if they can swim at all."

"And then what?" Andrea asked.

Michonne sighed. Again with the constant questioning like she was going to have some magic answer.

"Don't huff at me," Andrea said suddenly. "We're talking. This is what people do. I'm not holding you responsible for what the hell happens to us, I'm trying to figure out if you've got ideas. We go to an island, great, but then what? We just wait there to die? We live as fishermen?"

"Yes, I suppose we wait there to die," Michonne said, losing her temper a little at Andrea's frustrated tone of voice. "Or we wait here to die, either way it's coming. At least if we were on an island we're not looking over our shoulders constantly. You do realize, don't you, that when we leave here it won't be just because we got tired of the house. It'll be because we've got to fight our way through a herd of Walkers just to keep going."

"But alone, Michonne?" Andrea asked. "Your plan is just to go alone to an island?"

"Did you have someone you wanted to take with you?" Michonne asked.

Andrea was silent for a few minutes and Michonne got up from the spot she was occupying. She cleaned up the trash from where they had eaten and moved the pots and utensils to the side. Tomorrow they would go and find the creeks and then they could bring back water to do things like wash dishes and bathe themselves. Doing all those things inside the house, especially using the small fireplace for all their heating needs, was frustrating and limiting, but it was safer than trying to do it outside. They needed some sort of protection from the winter weather that would be upon them soon, and they couldn't risk drawing too much Walker attention or they'd be run out before they got really settled.

"I know that you don't like the idea of trusting people," Andrea said, "but if we were going to take over some kind of island, don't you think it might be a good idea to take others with us? Or what if there's something here? What if we don't even have to go to an island?"

"What do you think we're going to find?" Michonne asked. She busied herself straightening up their items, though she was really just trying to find something to occupy her hands so that she had an excuse not to be looking at Andrea for the moment.

"I don't know," Andrea said. "I can't believe that there's just nothing left out there. Somewhere there's got to be people that are rebuilding society. It can't all just be some kind of barren wasteland."

"I've thought of that," Michonne said. The truth was that she had thought about it many times. When she'd first set out on her own that was what she thought she might find. She might eventually run into people who were reconstructing life as they'd known it before. Or maybe there was even some hope that the plague or whatever it was that had brought the dead to life hadn't reached everywhere. Maybe somewhere there was a place that was left untouched. As time had worn on, though, she'd begun to put those thoughts out of her mind. If this was an isolated incident, and only Georgia or some small area was experiencing it, then surely there would have been some kind of help that was sent by now.

"What if we found my group?" Andrea asked. "Would you trust them? They were my friends. We could all go to this island together. We could build our own little society there if we don't find anything here."

"They were your friends?" Michonne asked, turning around. "Andrea, they _left_ you. Are you really going to go running back to them with open arms if you see them?"

"I'm sure they have an explanation for why they left," Andrea said. "I told you before. The herd that attacked was the biggest we'd seen. We got separated. They probably had every reason to believe that I was dead."

"How long did you stay to look for the little girl?" Michonne asked.

Andrea looked at her, struck for a moment.

"How long did you stay?" Michonne repeated.

"I don't know," Andrea said, "a while. I didn't exactly keep a calendar. We were hoping to stay on the farm for good. It was a safe place, or so we thought. We didn't just stay for Sophia. We stayed for Carol, and we stayed because we thought we could build a life there…"

"So you went to the farm in the first place because you thought you could build this fairytale life there?" Michonne asked. She put down the things she was holding in her hands and moved back to the center of the room. She sat across from Andrea again and studied the blonde's face. There were tears brimming in her eyes.

"We went to the farm because Rick was there with Carl. We were staying until he got better, and Sophia was lost in the woods, so we were going to look for her while we were there. It was only then that we started to think that the place would be a good place to stay," Andrea said. "And Lori was pregnant, so Rick wanted her to stay there."

"And what did you want?" Michonne asked.

Andrea shook her head.

"I don't know what I wanted," Andrea said. "Sometimes I wanted to stay, sometimes I wanted to go. I felt like the odd man out there."

"So you want us to go out and find this group of yours, this group that made you feel like the odd man out? The same group that stayed on the farm for all that time but left you behind? You want to find them and try to make the rest of our lives with them?" Michonne asked.

Andrea looked at her and Michonne couldn't read what was going on behind her eyes. She felt bad for obviously hurting her feelings, but she couldn't bring herself to believe that this was a group that they needed. She'd been doing fine on her own, but if she was going to travel with Andrea now, if they were going to work together, then she didn't feel like this group was something they needed to pursue. They were going to have a hard enough time surviving without having all those other people to worry about, especially if they weren't people that could be depended on.

Andrea shook her head again, but she didn't say anything. She was crying, but it was obvious to Michonne that she was trying _not_ to cry. Michonne wasn't sure what to do. She crawled closer to Andrea and pulled her into a hug, hoping to calm her down.

"I'm sorry," Michonne said, rubbing her back. She was silently kicking herself now. Andrea had opened up to her. She'd spilled everything about her story so far, everything that had destroyed her or threatened to destroy her since the madness took over. Michonne realized that she'd just used that against her, though she hadn't really intended to do it when she'd opened her mouth. Andrea didn't know her story yet, and Michonne wasn't sure she'd ever feel comfortable telling her everything, or that she could even bring herself to say it all out loud, but she knew that she would never want Andrea to use it against her if she did. "I'm sorry," she repeated. Andrea wrapped her arms around her and they stayed that way for a few moments until Andrea obviously calmed and pulled away.

"No, don't be sorry," Andrea said, swiping at her face with her hands. "You're right. I wanted to believe that they were my group…that we all cared about each other…but you're right. Rick was in charge, and what was important was only what was important for Rick."

Andrea sat there a few minutes, now wiping her face with her shirt. She shrugged a little and offered Michonne a halfhearted chuckle.

"The only reason we even looked for the little girl was because Rick felt guilty for leaving her in the woods. I don't know if he even cared about her…or if he even cared that Carol had lost her kid, you know?" Andrea said.

Michonne nodded, feeling her chest tighten.

"Those things happen these days," Michonne said, softly.

"Not to Rick and Lori they don't," Andrea said. "Maybe to everyone else…but not to Rick and Lori. Especially not Lori."

Michonne settled back, sitting close enough to Andrea that their knees were touching. She knew so many stories, or snippets of stories from the other group, but she listened to them over and over when Andrea wanted to tell them, or when she felt like she needed to. Michonne had heard about Lori a few times, but she didn't have a clear understanding for the woman. Sometimes she seemed like someone she was supposed to like, other times she seemed like someone she would likely hate. If she'd been reading the stories in a book she wouldn't have had any idea what to do with Lori as a character.

"If Rick was leading the group, and everyone was doing what he wanted," Michonne said, "then I guess it was only reasonable to him to use that in order to take care of what was dear to him."

"Yeah," Andrea said. "And to do what was going to make him feel better. He had to do what was best for Lori, and Lori certainly had to do what was best for Lori." Andrea sat there silent for a few minutes. She reached her hand out and absentmindedly touched Michonne's hand that she had resting on her knee. Michonne didn't say anything, and she didn't pull away. "You know, I almost left them…" Andrea said.

"You almost left them?" Michonne asked. The confession seemed utterly bizarre since Andrea seemed so dead set on finding them sometimes.

"Yeah, I did," Andrea said. "I thought that…I don't know…I thought that I could leave with Shane. He was so wrapped in Lori, but he was outside of the group too. I thought that if he left, and if I went with him, that maybe we could make it. Maybe we'd find something better, or build our own group. It would be something where I would feel like I was just as important as everybody else instead of feeling on the outside."

Michonne swallowed. She nodded her head and turned the hand on her knee over, wrapping her fingers around Andrea's hand.

"So now it's you and me," Michonne said. "We're not a big group, but if you want to stay, I'd say that neither of us is any more important than the other. This place isn't much, but it's just as much yours as is it is mine."

Andrea smiled, her eyes still damp, and squeezed Michonne's hand.

"Do you really mean that, or are you just trying to get me to shut up?" Andrea asked.

Michonne half smiled at her in response.

"There's that too, but I do mean it. I wasn't bluffing when I said we'd find an island together somewhere, but I can't guarantee we won't be alone there," Michonne said.

Andrea nodded.

"Well, I guess we'll just have to see what it's like when we get there," Andrea said. "It might not be so bad not to have a bunch of people around."

Michonne could see that Andrea was feeling a little better. She imagined they would hit a lot of rocky spots emotionally if they continued to travel together. That couldn't be avoided. They both had a lot of things to deal with. You couldn't escape it if you'd survived this long in this world.

"Hey," Andrea said after a second, bringing Michonne out of her momentary lapse into a daydream, "you gotta try my bed. We got a new comforter _and_ those sheets are 800 thread count. Plus, I got them big so the sleeping bag is under there as an extra level of softness."

Michonne couldn't help but smile at the look that Andrea was giving her. She had her eyebrows raised and was nearly smiling, as though she was congratulating herself on the impressive bed that she'd made for them.

"Why so special?" Michonne asked.

"If we're going to stay here for a while," Andrea replied with a shrug, "we might as well as enjoy it as much as we can."

Michonne nodded. She didn't want to admit it, but she was tired and Andrea's description did make the bed sound heavenly. Before all this had happened Michonne's bed had been something she'd always taken some kind of pride in. It was always the best for her bedroom. It was, after all, her sanctuary away from everything else.

"Well then let's go to bed and try this out," Michonne said with a smile. "We need to rest. Tomorrow we've got to find water."

"And don't forget that shed," Andrea said.

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Andrea stripped out of her clothes leaving just her shirt and underwear on. They'd never been able to sleep in pajamas or anything of the like when they were camping in the woods, but that was owing to the fact that they were exposed to the elements and they were also exposed to any possible passing Walkers. Most of the time they even slept with their boots on.

Here in the house, though, they didn't have to leave everything on. They could be a little more relaxed and not be worried about being caught naked by a herd descending upon them or catching their death of cold.

Michonne stripped down to her shirt and underwear too, and Andrea waited to the side while Michonne slipped into the bed, moaning a little as she snuggled down under the cover.

"Comfortable?" Andrea asked, smiling. She slipped into the bed too, and hugged her pillow under her head, rubbing her face against the soft pillowcase.

"I don't even want to go to sleep," Michonne said. "I don't want to miss how good this feels."

Andrea snickered.

"So I did good by picking up a few extra things for the bed?" Andrea asked.

"Excellent," Michonne said. "You're on bed duty from now on."

"I could handle that," Andrea said. She snuggled a little more into the bed and pulled the comforter up under her chin.

Sometimes she hated talking about the group. It brought so many emotions. Some of them were good and others were bad, but sometimes she just wanted a break from all of them. She was conflicted because she felt like she'd never been the kind to want to be alone in the world. She'd always had a lot of friends and she'd enjoyed her social circles when she was in school and when she'd found her job. Andrea liked people.

It seemed, though, that she was now going to be spending a good deal of time with someone who didn't like people. She wasn't entirely sure how she would adapt to that. Though the more she thought about what Michonne had said, the more she realized that Michonne may be right to some degree. It could be difficult to find people out there that weren't just looking out for themselves, or their special little people, and who were actually interested in your needs and wants.

Andrea heard Michonne's breathing grow steady beside her. She inched just a little closer to her, careful not to wake her, and enjoyed the heat radiating off her skin. They were almost touching, though not quite, and it was as close as Andrea dared to get.

Maybe they'd continue on like this…and maybe one day they'd find her old group or another group. Maybe they'd find some spectacular place where people had rebuilt the world they used to know and society was functioning normally. Or maybe they'd end up on Michonne's island and just grow old together, alone. Andrea didn't really know what would happen, and she honestly didn't know what she wanted to happen.

She may not have _people_ around her right now, and she may never have a _group_ again for a while, but for right now she was pleased that Michonne was opening up to her and that they were at least discussing possibilities for the future…possibilities that included both of them. Andrea might not have _people_ right now, but she was starting to enjoy her _person_ just as much as she ever had the group.


	7. Chapter 7

Andrea awoke to something tickling her face. At first she willed the tickle away, but then it was too much and she swatted her hand without fully coming into a waking state. Then she opened her eyes and realized that during the night she'd wiggled herself so close to Michonne that her dreadlocks were spilling over her face.

Andrea slid away and sat up, stretching. She had no idea what time it was, and frankly she couldn't care less. She felt like she was waking from a perfect sleep. Michonne rolled over then and her eyes slowly batted open. At first she looked like she was fighting the fact that fact that it was morning, scrunching her face up against it. Andrea snickered a little.

"Rise and shine, sunshine," Andrea said, hearing the sleep in her own voice. Michonne opened her eyes completely then and raised herself up enough to prop her head up, her elbow on the pillow.

"I didn't know you were so much of a morning person," Michonne said.

"Neither did I," Andrea said. "How did you sleep?"

"I would say like the dead," Michonne said, stretching out, "but then I wouldn't have gotten much sleep at all."

Andrea chuckled at the joke. Her companion _had_ slept well. Talking and making jokes; that was a vast improvement for the Michonne that had plucked her out of the woods.

"Can you start a fire?" Andrea asked. She was fairly certain that she could do it, but Michonne seemed to have some magic touch for getting the fireplace to spark. "I can make us some coffee."

Michonne groaned and sat up. She didn't even bother getting up, she simply half crawled and half drug herself toward the fireplace, sliding off the mattress and taking her pillow with her to the floor when she went. Andrea stifled a laugh and pulled her pillow back, putting it on the bed. It was her turn, then, to get up, but she did it more gracefully than Michonne and actually got to her feet. She started fumbling around in boxes trying to figure out what they could have for breakfast.

"We get some water today and tomorrow morning I can make pancakes," Andrea said, finding a box of instant pancake mix in some of the assorted food that they'd drug in from their little storage room. "I bet there's even syrup in there somewhere."

"Pancakes, hmmm?" Michonne said from her position lighting the fire. "Gourmet breakfast at the end of the world. Lucky for us the water is the first thing on the to do list for the day."

"And second?" Andrea asked, finally deciding that granola was about all they were having until they replenished their water supplies unless she somewhere found the desire to sit and empty small plastic water bottles into a pot.

"That barn out back and the little shed," Michonne said. "I want to know what's back there."

"Well then get the coffee going and let's get this show on the road," Andrea said. She tossed a granola bar toward Michonne. Michonne wasn't expecting it, so it bounced off her chest and landed in her lap. She fished it out from between her legs and peeled back the wrapper.

"A nice bed does a lot for you," Michonne said.

Andrea smiled.

"I feel like I just woke up from one of those sleep commercials that they used to show all the time. All that's missing is the butterflies and the birds chirping," Andrea said.

"Low budget commercial? Because your hair looks more like something off the sci fi channel right now," Michonne responded.

Andrea threw another granola bar at her.

"At least you didn't wake up with my hair attacking you," she said. Michonne raised an eyebrow at her. "Your hair was all over me this morning, slapping me in the face."

Michonne didn't respond. She simply moved to get the coffee pot and pour some of the bottled water in, preparing to put it over the small fire that was burning. The smile on her face, though, told Andrea that this was possibly going to be the best day that they'd spent together. Her little nest had worked, in more ways than one.

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"Can you see anything?" Michonne asked. Andrea was slowly making her way around the little shed. Whatever was under it was covered with a tarp and she was more than a little nervous to move the tarp. Clearly she didn't expect a Walker to come out, they'd been out there long enough that one would have shown himself if he'd been under there, but Walkers weren't the only things to be feared, even these days.

"Nothing I couldn't see before," Andrea said. She stepped forward and used the handle of the rotted rake she'd found against the back of the house to poke at the tarp.

"Oh for goodness sake," Michonne said. "Move out of the way, I'll do it."

Andrea held her hand up. She wasn't going to be outdone by Michonne. She slipped the end of the handle up under the tarp and flicked it back as quickly as she could. Just as she feared, a snake came sliding out, right in her direction. She side stepped as quickly as she could, squealing involuntarily at the scaly creature.

"Dead," Michonne said. Andrea turned to see that Michonne had already reacted and removed the head from the snake which still twitched around on the ground. Michonne resheathed her katana. "Think there's any more in there?"

Andrea shrugged. She hoped there weren't any more in there. She didn't think she could stand the irony of having lived through all she'd seen simply to die from a snakebite. Andrea stepped forward, attempting to appear less shaken by the snake's somewhat expected appearance than she actually was. She stepped forward and examined the area. The shed was falling in from decay and neglect and the weeds around everything under there were almost as tall as she was.

Michonne stepped up behind her then, trying to pretend that she hadn't been hunkering back in case another of their slithering friends decided to slide out. Michonne hacked somewhat gingerly at the weeds, mowing them down enough for them to be able to make out better what was under there.

"It's a generator," Andrea said.

"What are the odds it works?" Michonne asked.

"Don't know, but I've got some mechanical skills," Andrea said. "If we could get it working, we could have some electricity."

"Probably even running water," Michonne said. "A lot of the houses in this area seem to have worked on wells, which makes sense with the water nearby."

"How about that?" Andrea asked, turning around, "we could be sitting here with electricity and running water for the winter."

"We'd need fuel," Michonne said. "And if the thing's too loud to run then we can't chance it. We don't want to bring Walkers down on us."

"OK," Andrea said, ripping some of the weeds from around the generator with her hands. "Could you _not_ be Debbie Downer for just a few minutes? Even if it doesn't work I was at least enjoying the idea of hot running water."

Michonne snickered.

"Fine, you play with that toy and I'm going to see what's in the barn," Michonne said.

"Be careful," Andrea called. She looked over the generator just to see Michonne shoot her a look as she walked toward the door, her katana already in her hand.

Andrea heard the growling of a Walker and turned quickly, expecting it to be behind her. She was surprised, however, when there wasn't anything there. Then she heard the barn door rattle and she looked in Michonne's direction. She didn't need to wonder any longer. There was at least one Walker closed in the small barn.

For a moment, Andrea found herself having a flashback to the farm. She remembered the day that Shane had busted open the barn door, to a much larger barn, that had been rattling back and forth like the one that Michonne was standing in front of now. Andrea raised herself to her full height and rested her hand on the handle of her knife. It wasn't likely there were more than two Walkers in the tiny barn, but she was going to be prepared regardless.

Michonne reached her katana out and pushed open the board that held the door shut. Immediately a Walker lunged forward, slinging the doors open. Michonne stepped back quickly to avoid being knocked over by the door and quickly sliced down the Walker. She stood a moment, her katana in hand, waiting. She shot a quick look at Andrea and stepped in front of the door again.

Andrea waited quietly until she was sure that no other Walker would come spilling out of the dark shadows of the little barn. She turned her attention back to the generator, sure now that she could get the thing to work.

"What's in there?" Andrea called.

"Dear God it stinks in here!" Michonne shouted back. Andrea abandoned her generator for the moment and crossed the small space of yard, stepping over the now lifeless corpse of the Walker. She didn't even have to step into the barn where Michonne was before she was hit by the putrid smell. She gagged a little, which was saying a lot considering that the air surrounding them smelled like decay at almost any given time.

"What is it?" Andrea asked, pressing her nose against her shoulder in an attempt to get some relief from the smell.

Michonne came rushing out of the barn a moment later, her face drawn up, fighting the gagging that was seizing her.

"Just rotted meat, I think," she said. "I can't tell much without a lantern. There's a freezer of some sort in there. Seems like they had electricity out here. All that shit's just been in there fermenting."

Michonne gagged again and Andrea reached out, rubbing her back. The smell was overwhelming outside of the barn and she couldn't imagine having spent a few minutes in there.

"We'll leave the door open," she said, "let it air out a bit. Did you see anything else in there, or is it pretty much useless going in without a light?"

Michonne straightened up and wiped her mouth with the back of her arm, gulping in the relatively fresh air around them.

"There's quite a few gas cans in there. I don't know if they're full or not, but I bet they're for the generator. Looked like some tools, but I couldn't really tell what else was in there. I was trying to keep from puking," Michonne said.

Andrea nodded.

"We can check it out after it's aired a little. The gas will come in handy if this generator isn't too loud. I can have it running in no time. It's really not in bad condition, at least I don't think it is," Andrea said. "You know we can always siphon more gas."

Michonne nodded, but it was clear that she didn't intend to continue the conversation. Andrea didn't mind, though, realizing it was more from trying to keep her stomach settled than it was from her previously reserved state.

Michonne joined Andrea back near the house and hung around her while she worked to get the generator running. A few lone Walkers sauntered nearby and Michonne took them down without drawing much attention at all to their presence. When Andrea finally got the generator working, and they filled it with gas, they both stood against the wall of the house and waited for a few minutes to see if it would serve as a dinner bell for passing Walkers.

After a little while of leaning lazily against the side of the house without any Walker incidents, both women were satisfied that their generator didn't attract Walkers. Andrea followed Michonne inside and they began testing various items in the house, finding that they did indeed now have access to electricity, and yes, even hot water.

Andrea didn't even try to hide her excitement when they discovered the hot water. It wasn't scalding, and they certainly wouldn't run the risk of burning themselves in the shower, but it was something and they could actually take hot showers. That was a vast improvement over their normal sponge baths with water heated in a pot over the fireplace.

"We'll have to be smart about the generator," Michonne said. "We'll make a schedule for when we'll run it. That way we don't have to go searching out so much fuel."

Andrea nodded.

"Fine," she said, "but before we get smart about it, let's get clean."

Michonne smiled at her.

"I agree. Tell you what," Michonne said. "You take the first shower and I'll start dinner. Then you can finish dinner up while I shower. We both get to eat, and we both get to be clean."

Andrea nodded and began stripping immediately. Any lingering residue of concern about modesty was lost. She walked, unashamed and with the same nature that Michonne displayed, toward the bathroom on the first floor, fishing around in a linen closet for a towel. She couldn't remember a time when she'd been as excited about something as she was about the prospect of a hot, relaxing shower.

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Michonne slipped out of the house after her shower to turn off the generator, volunteering to do the job so that Andrea could sit basking in the glow of unaltered cleanliness. In response, Andrea divided up the food that they'd have for dinner and rummaged around in the storage area coming up with one of numerous bottles of wine that she'd found when they were out on their run.

When Michonne came back in the house, toeing off her boots and wiping her feet off with a damp cloth in an effort to restore the feeling of being completely clean, she smiled in response to the spread that Andrea had fixed across their tiny living space. She made her way over and sat down near the plate that Andrea indicated was hers.

"Looks like a fancy dinner," Michonne said, glancing at Andrea.

"Only the finest pork and beans, and I hear that this wine is a good year too," she said, cracking open the twist top on the bottle of cheap wine and pouring it into two of the juice glasses she'd found in the kitchen cabinets.

"You drink it, I don't want any," Michonne protested when Andrea sat the glass next to her knee.

"Don't tell me you don't drink," Andrea said. "Tonight we drink, for tomorrow we die, isn't that the saying? Fits now more than it ever did."

Michonne glanced toward her, shoveling the beans into her mouth without concern for decorum.

"Just don't need to be drunk," Michonne said. "Not with Walkers ambling about out there. Last thing we need is to get caught out of our wits."

Andrea looked around the house that she felt to be haunted at times. Her eyes settled back on her companion.

"The windows are covered, the fire's pretty low. The door's locked and I heard you put the board into place. Everything around here's pretty secure," Andrea said. "We haven't seen any evidence of a herd waiting to plow down the walls around us. I don't supposed a glass of cheap, supermarket wine is really going to throw you off. I've seen you with that sword."

Michonne shrugged a little in the flickering firelight.

"I haven't drank since this whole thing started. Even cheap wine would go to my head," she said.

"It's a bottle of wine between the two of us at most, and that's if we're really planning to party," Andrea said. "Thought you might like to relax. It's not every day we get a hot shower, a fancy meal, wine, _and_ a bed sent from heaven just waiting on us to pass out."

Michonne glanced at Andrea again and for a moment Andrea thought there was something in her expression that hadn't been there before. Andrea took a swallow of her wine, though, and decided it was simply the cheap wine already going to her head a little.

Michonne shrugged and picked the glass up. She studied the contents in the firelight for a moment and took a swallow that drained nearly half the juice glass. Andrea thought that perhaps she should point out that Michonne had, in one gulp, taken in more than she had in a few swallows, but she decided against it. The worst that would happen would be that the warrior would return to bed the same way she'd gotten out this morning, on her hands and knees.

They finished eating and Andrea collected the plates together and put them near the fireplace to wash in the morning. She refilled their glasses and scooted herself closer to Michonne, the warming effect of the wine beginning to take over her body and lighten her head.

"So now what?" Andrea asked. "We've got food, shelter, water…what do we do tomorrow?"

Michonne turned, drinking without question now from her wine glass. She shrugged a little, tracing her finger across the top of the glass.

"We stay as long as we can," she said. "We hope nothing happens, and we move on when we have to. We go for supplies, maybe make a few runs to see if we can find weapons. Work on a plan."

"A plan for what," Andrea asked.

Michonne drew her knees up, resting her chin on one of them.

"A plan for the future. Where we're going, how we're going to get there," she said lazily. Andrea realized that for as light as her head felt, her companion was clearly feeling the same way.

This was the first time that Andrea had really taken the time to study Michonne. Now she was in front of her, washed clean of every bit of muck and mud they'd carried around. She was wearing a pair of gray cotton shorts and a white tank top, and nothing else, her dreads falling around her face.

She didn't look as intimidating and as frightening as she once did. Stripped of her leather vest, the cloak she hid behind, and the sword that made her deadly, Andrea realized that Michonne wasn't the fierce figure that she'd come to regard her as. She looked younger now in the firelight, softer. She was, by no means, someone not to be taken seriously, simply the muscles in her arms were a testament to that, but she wasn't the unhuman force that Andrea had imagined at first.

Her companion was simply a woman who had been doing the same thing that she'd been doing. She was a woman that was trying to survive this world. The only difference was that Michonne had been trying to survive it alone, and that was a new idea for Andrea.

Andrea didn't know what made her do it, but she stretched her arm out, resting her hand on top of the one that Michonne had resting on her thigh. Michonne rolled her head a little, looking at Andrea's hand on hers, but she didn't say anything, and she didn't pull her hand away.

Andrea studied their hands for a moment. The contrasting colors of their skin tone made less stark in the semi darkness around them. She realized that Michonne's hand was smaller than hers. Michonne was smaller than her. For a moment it struck Andrea. Michonne wasn't some towering figure either. It was as if, with the mixture of wine and relaxation, Andrea was watching the crumbling of some sort of goddess like person that she'd constructed in her mind.

Andrea finished the wine in the glass in her hand and held the glass there a moment, her other hand still resting over Michonne's. Michonne lifted her head and drained her own glass. She broke their contact, then, leaning forward to stretch toward the bottle that sat neglected a few feet away, another glass for each of them remaining at best, and then it would be spent.

Michonne pulled back, reaching to pour part of the contents into Andrea's glass. Andrea shifted her weight, leaning toward Michonne and bringing the glass closer to her. Without quite understanding why, and without carefully considering whether or not it was appropriate, Andrea brought her face close to Michonne's, their foreheads touching.

The feeling of Michonne's warm skin against hers, the smell of the body wash they'd found in the cabinet, and the intoxication of the wine washed over Andrea. She turned her face to the side, brushing Michonne's cheek slightly with her own, her eyes closed. She heard Michonne swallow and she turned her face again, her lips making contact with Michonne's.

For a moment they lingered there, their lips barely touching in a chaste kiss. Andrea slowly realized what was happening, and began to regret this, began to wonder how she'd brought herself to the point of thinking that this would be a good idea, or even OK, but she was almost afraid to pull away from her position and to open her eyes. She didn't know how to explain exactly why she was there, in that position, and she didn't want to see what Michonne's expression might hold.

She was surprised, though, when Michonne's lips parted, slightly at first, and then a little more. Andrea felt Michonne lean toward her and she answered back, parting her own lips and offering her tongue to the woman.

Before she knew it, the glass in her hand had somehow disappeared, moved to the side by some force perhaps, or by her own hand acting unconsciously from the rest of her body. Their tongues tangled together, exploring each other. Andrea felt Michonne's hand on the back of her head, and she wrapped her own arms around the woman, nearly falling into her lap to seek out deeper access to her mouth.

The kiss seemed to last for hours and Andrea's head swam with the taste of Michonne and the taste of cheap wine. She felt her lips burning, felt the tug of the other woman's teeth on her lower lip. She responded, nipping back. Her hands explored Michonne's back, slipped down to rest against the sharp curves of her hip bones. She felt Michonne's hands trailing on her own body, warmly clasping the back of her neck, rubbing the bare skin where her shirt and her pants didn't quite meet.

Andrea burned for more, a feeling that she'd never had before. Never for a woman, and never quite like this. She felt her breathing quicken outside of her control and she dug her fingertips into the soft skin of Michonne's lower back, wanting to dip her hands lower but not quite finding the courage to do so.

And then as suddenly as it had all began, it seemed to end. Michonne pulled away first, breaking the kiss and sitting back on her feet. Andrea sunk back to the floor, her legs inches from Michonne's, and tried to steady her breathing. For just a moment they sat there, staring at one another. Andrea realized that she saw on Michonne's face the same feeling that she had, the feeling of wanting more but not knowing how to get it, or even it was attainable.

Andrea felt like she should say something, but she didn't know what to say. She struggled to find words, but they wouldn't come. Michonne looked around, her eyes darting about in light that grew darker and darker by the minute as the flames began to die. Andrea saw Michonne find her glass, drink down the last of the contents, and then pull herself up on her hands and knees and begin her journey toward the mattress.

Andrea sat for a moment longer, in her position. Over her shoulder she watched as Michonne crawled silently into the bed and pulled the cover up over her. Andrea tipped back her own glass and finished off the wine that was there, the heat from the kiss and the alcohol burning in her gut. She put the glass down and turned her own body, taking the same route Michonne had to the mattress.

When she got there, she slipped under the covers and drew the pillow under her head. She could hear Michonne's breathing in the darkness and could tell that the woman was still awake. Her breath still hadn't slowed from the pace it acquired during the kiss that seemed to have lasted for hours. She wasn't speaking, though, and Andrea realized that they weren't going to speak of this, at least not tonight. She closed her eyes, trying to will herself to sleep, and wondered if they'd talk about it tomorrow. She wondered what it all meant, and she wondered what had driven her to initiate the intimate contact in the first place. The only reason she didn't fully regret the action at the moment was that she knew that even though she'd been the one to initiate it, Michonne had not ended it, at least not quickly, and she'd very clearly responded.

Whatever it was, whether spurred by wine or by something else, the kiss had been something that Andrea had wanted to happen…and it had clearly been something that Michonne wanted as well.


	8. Chapter 8

**AN: Thank you all for reading. I appreciate any feedback and reviews that you have to offer me.**

**I also thought that I'd take a moment to place here, since this is the story of mine that it would be most suiting, to let anyone reading here know that if lesbian relationships in general interest you, or if you happen to have been a fan of The L Word, I have a story going now for that show as well. It's a Jodette or Jobette story, but it's pretty AU, so you can enjoy the story with little to no knowledge of the show. I'm just throwing it out there for anyone that might be interested. It's called "The Language of My Heart".**

**I hope you enjoy the chapter. Let me know what you think and I'll try to get another one out to advance our little story as soon as possible! **

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Michonne woke first. Her head ached a little and she regretted the wine they'd drank the night before. They didn't eat enough to finish a whole bottle of wine between two people and she knew the action had been reckless.

She rolled a little in the bed. Andrea was still asleep, her eyes only barely closed. Michonne thought about the kiss. She didn't know why they had kissed and she had no idea what had driven Andrea to initiate it. Michonne had never kissed a woman in her life before.

She'd been married before all this. She'd had a life that was full of relationships, some more serious than others, but none of them had ever been with a woman. And suddenly, last night she'd been kissing Andrea, and she'd at least briefly considered the possibility of more, though she wasn't exactly certain how to progress from where they were.

Now she was just confused. She didn't know what the kiss had meant. She didn't know what it meant for her and she certainly wasn't sure about what it had meant for Andrea. It could, after all, have been some kind of wine induced slip up. Something the blonde had never meant to happen, something she'd regret entirely this morning. Michonne tried to ignore the nagging voice of her grandmother, in the back of her mind, saying that a drunk man's actions were only a sober man's thoughts.

Michonne tried to ease herself off of the mattress without shaking Andrea too much. She wasn't entirely sure she was ready to have the conversation that she knew they needed to have if they were going to continue living together in such close quarters.

For all her carefulness, though, she shook the mattress too much and before she'd made her run for it, Andrea stirred and sat up a little, rubbing her eyes with the back of her hand and obviously trying to come into reality.

"Time to get up already?" Andrea asked, a yawn stretching out the last word.

Michonne sat, trying to figure out what to say. Finally she just nodded and continued getting up and busying herself with making coffee.

Andrea rolled over and laid on the mattress facing her.

"Cat got your tongue this morning?" Andrea asked.

Michonne focused on the fire she was trying to start, making a mental note that their wood box needed to be filled, and wondered if Andrea had been affected enough by the wine to forget the evening entirely.

"You don't have a headache?" Michonne asked, not turning toward Andrea.

"Nope," Andrea said. "I could use about two more hours of sleep, but I feel fine. Why, do you have a headache?"

Michonne shook her head. She was going to ignore the slight throbbing in her head. If Andrea didn't have a headache then she wasn't going to admit that perhaps the wine had gotten to her a little more.

"If you want to sleep," Michonne said, "then you should sleep. We don't have much to do today. I'm going to fill the wood box, but I don't need help for that. We're going to have a lot of down time now that we're settled."

Andrea moaned a little, the tired moan of someone coming to terms with the fact that they're about to pull themselves out of a bed that they don't quite feel like leaving.

"So what you're saying is we should start considering some hobbies?" Andrea asked, dragging herself over the side of the mattress and starting across the floor on her hands and knees. Michonne didn't respond to her. "What did you do when you were alone and camping in some house? How did you pass the time?" Andrea asked. She crawled near Michonne and shifted to sit on her behind, her knees pulled up to her chest.

"I read," Michonne said, "when I could find something to read. I thought a lot."

"Even if you're the most interesting person in the world," Andrea said, "it must get awful boring to be alone with your thoughts after a while."

"Not really," Michonne said.

The truth was that it did get boring to be alone with your thoughts. It was almost maddening at times. There had been times when Michonne had felt sure that she was going crazy, that she was right on the edge. She never could be sure if it was all that she'd done, all that she'd had to do, to survive this madness that had driven her there, or if it was the sound of her own voice in her head. The problem wasn't so much being along with your thoughts, it was the fact that you couldn't always control what you were thinking. It was the fact that when you didn't want to think about something, that seemed like the thing that you thought about most of all. That was what drove you crazy in the silence.

"Well I don't want to talk to myself all winter," Andrea said. "I guess you'll have to keep me company from time to time." She sat silently for a moment. "We can check out this house. I bet there are some books somewhere. I could read to you, and you could read to me. If we get really good at the books, who knows, we could act them out or something. It could be something to kill time."

Michonne chuckled a little. Killing time. Ironically that's exactly what they'd be doing. That's all there really was to do these days. You killed time when things were quiet, waiting for them to crazy again. Then you fought for your life so that you could spend more of it killing time. It was hard to feel like there was anything worthwhile anymore. Michonne felt like she'd lost everything in her life that had ever been worthwhile. Sometimes, when she was alone, her mind reminded her of that. It made her wonder why she kept fighting to move forward. She supposed, sometimes, that it was maybe just habit. She doubted Andrea could understand that feeling, though, so she kept her thoughts to herself.

"So are we going to talk about it?" Michonne asked, finally. She reached to pull the kettle off of the makeshift stove she'd made with the rack she found in the microwave. Carelessly she let her fingers touch the metal and snatched back quickly, hissing at the burn.

Andrea grabbed her wrist before she could react too much and uncurled her fingers, examining the burn.

She didn't respond to Michonne's question. Instead she got up and disappeared, coming back a few minutes later with her hands full. Michonne had already pulled the kettle from the fire and was sitting there.

"It's fine," she protested, when Andrea sat near her and tugged at her arm.

"Let me see it, Michonne," Andrea said. "You got burnt, it happens. Let me clean it."

"It's not a bad burn," Michonne protested. She wasn't sure how she felt about Andrea trying to doctor her, trying to baby her. She'd been burned more than once while she was on her own and she hadn't needed Andrea there to wipe at it as though she were some kind of baby and incapable of taking care of herself. "Leave it alone."

Andrea ignored her entirely. It was as though Andrea couldn't hear the words that were coming out of her mouth. Andrea pulled her arm closer to her and gently mopped at the small burns across three of Michonne's fingers with a damp rag. Michonne hissed at her.

"We don't have any burn salve," Andrea said. "We need to do a really good pharmacy run. Not just Advil here and there, we need to really hit somewhere. Maybe even look into a hospital."

Michonne watched her as she cleaned the wounds and then carefully wrapped them in gauze, tearing tape with her teeth and securing it into place.

"I'm sure there are pharmacies around," Michonne said. "Probably doctor's offices and hospitals too."

Andrea glanced at her for a moment before gently brushing her fingertips over the now bandaged places.

"That's going to throb," she said. "I'll dig you something for pain out of one of the boxes in a minute."

"I don't need it," Michonne said. The burns weren't serious and she wasn't going to be one of those people that whined about minor injuries when there were major things that could happen to them any time.

"You're going to take it," Andrea said. "There's no need to be in pain for no reason at all. A little Tylenol will keep that from hurting too bad until we can find some salve to put on it. Maybe after you get the wood that you wanted to find we could drive into town. Gives us something to do with the day, right? We don't know what else could happen, better to be prepared."

Michonne nodded. She knew that Andrea was right. There really wasn't any telling what they might need to be able to handle medically, and having supplies on hand was a good idea. They didn't have anything else to do, and otherwise they'd simply be sitting around and staring at each other.

"Fine," Michonne said. "We'll go for medical supplies later. Pharmacies and doctor's offices only, though, for now. Hospitals are pretty big spaces and you can bet there are Walkers there, more than we want to deal with."

Andrea nodded.

"I'm not trying to fight with you, Michonne. You don't need to be so hostile," Andrea said.

Michonne hadn't realized that her tone of voice had taken on a hostile sound. She really didn't mean it that way at all.

"I'm sorry," she said. She offered Andrea a cup of coffee and Andrea took it, sipping at the liquid. She watched Michonne over the top of the cup.

Michonne's fingers were throbbing, but she didn't want to admit it. She flexed them a little, getting used to the pull of the tape where Andrea had bandaged them.

"You burned them good," Andrea said. "That's at least a second degree burn. You don't want them getting infected. It seems like something small, but small injuries can be just as bad as serious ones."

Michonne eyed her. She didn't need Andrea acting like a mother to her. She was well aware that infection could be bad, and that it was something that was very easy to get these days. If things hadn't been sanitary once upon a time, they surely weren't now.

"They're fine," she said softly. She raised her coffee cup to her lips and sipped at the warm liquid. "So we're not going to talk about it?"

"About what?" Andrea asked.

Michonne wondered if Andrea's memory was really bad enough that the burn had distracted her so much, or was she simply avoiding the topic of the kiss.

"About last night," Michonne said.

Andrea lowered her eyes and took another drink of her coffee.

"I didn't know if you'd want to talk about that," Andrea said.

"What was it about?" Michonne asked.

Andrea set her eyes on her for a moment and Michonne wished she had some kind of power to be able to read the woman's mind. A hint of a smile crossed Andrea's lips.

"I'm not really sure," Andrea said. She shrugged a little. "I wanted to kiss you…so I did."

"Why did you want to kiss me?" Michonne asked.

The same hint of a smile returned to Andrea's lips. She looked Michonne in the eye for a moment and then let her eyes trail down.

"I don't know," Andrea said. "I don't know that I've ever known why I wanted to kiss someone. Are you upset? Because you seem a little on edge."

Michonne considered the question. She wasn't sure what she felt. She wasn't sure if she was upset or not. She had liked the kiss, but perhaps that was what was bothering her most of all. She wanted to understand it, and she wanted to understand why she had enjoyed it when it was something that she'd never considered as something she might want to do.

"What did it mean?" Michonne asked. "To you? What did it mean?"

"It mean that I wanted to kiss you, and I kissed you," Andrea said. "If it was a mistake, then I'm sorry."

"Because you were drinking," Michonne said, her grandmother's words ringing in the back of her mind again.

Andrea shook her head.

"No…I don't think it was because of the wine," Andrea said. "I'm not even sure it was the first time that it crossed my mind." She was quiet for a minute. She was staring into her coffee cup as though the liquid within was going to provide her with some kind of answers. "I'm not even sure that I wouldn't kiss you again…"

Michonne swallowed. She didn't know why Andrea would want to kiss her. She wasn't being kind to her and she certainly wasn't being inviting. Part of her, though, wanted the blonde to kiss her, and that made her uneasy. It made her feel a little out of control. On the other hand, a voice in the back of her mind made her wonder if Andrea had kissed her simply because she felt something toward her for having saved her in the woods, or maybe just for curiosity's sake. In the life before this Michonne had known her share of people who went about trying to conquer others and enter into relationships just to treat them like trading cards.

"I don't want to be some experiment for you," Michonne said. "I don't want to be your knight in shining armor…and I don't want to be your I-kissed-a-girl experience, and I don't want to be your little black girl experiment. I'm not interested in that."

As soon as Michonne said it, she saw all hint of a smile drop from Andrea's face. Andrea stared at her for a minute, her forehead wrinkling a little. Finally she nodded a little and put her coffee cup, unfinished, on the floor. She pulled herself up.

"Thank you, Michonne, for clearing things up for me," Andrea said. "I really hadn't thought to make it a cheap experience, but maybe that's what it was, or at least that's what it was for you. I'm sorry that it made you feel that way."

Andrea went about, then, pulling on her shoes quickly. She took her knife, one of the lighters, and a candle.

"What are you doing?" Michonne asked, unsure what Andrea might be up to, and suddenly feeling sorry for what she said in light of the fact that the woman was clearly upset by her words. Michonne could see now that she had been wrong in saying them and that hadn't been what Andrea had meant by the kiss. She wasn't likely, though, to find out now exactly what she _had_ thought, even though she wanted to know.

"I'm going to look in that barn," Andrea said.

"You're going out there alone?" Michonne asked, putting her own cup down and turning a little.

Andrea swung around at her, smiling just a little, but it was a fake smile. Michonne thought she could see tears brimming in the woman's eyes and she felt even worse for what she'd said.

"You're not my knight in shining armor," Andrea said. "I don't need you to hold my hand. You need to go and get wood. I'm going in the barn. When you get back, we'll go and get medical supplies. That's what we are, a team, right? We're just working together to survive this thing, nothing else." Andrea started to the door and Michonne heard her dislodging the wood that was there to keep back anything that would try to enter that way. "Don't get those burns dirty," Andrea said. "We don't know if we'll be able to find antibiotics…and Michonne…" Andrea paused for a moment, "don't forget that you kissed me back."

Michonne sat there a moment until she heard the door shut. She could faintly hear the hollow sound of Andrea's feet on the porch.

Andrea was mad, or more than that, she was hurt. Michonne understood that now. She had kissed her, and Michonne had kissed her back, and apparently it _had_ meant something. Now Michonne wished she'd kept her cynical nature under wraps a little longer. She wondered how the morning might have gone differently, and what might have happened if she'd asked Andrea to kiss her again over coffee instead of accusing her of simply kissing her for some sort of cheap thrill.

Michonne got up, getting herself ready, and went out to get wood. She hoped that Andrea was alright in the barn. She realized that she was already becoming, somewhat against her will, attached to the blonde. She also hoped that by the time they went to try and find medical supplies she'd figured out what she could say to soothe things with her, how she could apologize for what she'd said, and that she'd figured out if she had the guts to go through with what she was thinking and to offer the blonde a kiss of her own to even the field.


	9. Chapter 9

"A hospital would be like an all you can eat buffet," Andrea said, driving the truck down the road. She was trying to pretend that what Michonne had said earlier accusing her of kissing her as some kind of notches in the bedpost experiment hadn't bothered her, but she couldn't quite get over the burn of it. Now they were going on a run to get medical supplies.

Michonne was in the passenger seat, one leg up against the dash of the truck, her katana between her legs, sulking. She would have denied, of course, the fact that she was sulking, but Andrea could tell. She wasn't sure, exactly, why Michonne was sulking though, since she saw the insult of the morning as really having come from Michonne more than herself.

"Yeah, an all you can eat buffet for Walkers," Michonne said. "I don't feel up to being an entrée today if you don't mind."

Andrea sighed.

"We don't know that a hospital would be too overrun to get in and get out," Andrea said. They'd already briefly discussed this and it was more than probable that a hospital could be a dangerous run. It was only logical to assume that any number of people would have died in a place like that when the world came crashing in, and it would only have taken one Walker bite to turn the place from a cemetery into a an overflowing collection of animated corpses.

Michonne sighed from the seat next to her.

"We would have to know our way around a hospital pretty well to get in and get out in time to avoid an attack and still be able to get anything worth picking up," Michonne said. "If we go in there blind then they'll be on us before we so much as get a handful of something. Let's stick to smaller spaces where there are less surprises."

Andrea could see the reason in Michonne's words and she wasn't going to be adamant about this merely on principle. There were only two of them. They were limited, no matter what their skills were, as to how many Walkers they could reasonably take on at one time.

"You're right," Andrea said. She slowed the truck a little and pushed a Walker that was in the road. The Walker made its way from in front of her slowly and ambled off down the bank. She could have hit it, but at the speed she was travelling she would have likely gotten the truck stuck and then that would have been more for them to have to deal with.

They drove along in compatible silence until they finally reached the same town they'd done their earlier run at. Andrea decided to bypass the most obvious pharmacy under the reasoning that it would be the one most likely looted. It seemed that when people looted these days, they went for the biggest and flashiest locations, often not bothering with smaller stores and businesses.

She didn't know the area, and neither did Michonne, so she drove up and down the roads surrounding town in search of something that looked promising. She finally spotted what she was looking for, apparently at the same time Michonne saw it, because Michonne sat up and called out to her just as her eyes scanned the sign.

"Looks like we made it," Andrea said, pulling the truck over and killing the engine. From inside the truck she could see maybe eleven Walkers congregated in street around them, outside the clinic that they'd found. If they could do this without drawing attention, eleven Walkers would be a piece of cake. "Ready?" She asked, feeling to double check that her knife was in its harness at her hip.

"Let's do it," Michonne said, sighing and opening her door. They closed the truck doors almost at exactly the same time and the sound was enough to draw the attention of the Walkers, which was essentially exactly what they wanted.

Andrea pulled her knife and busied herself with putting down the Walkers in her general vicinity, unconcerned with Michonne who was cleaning up the other side of the street. After putting about five down, Andrea turned to check on Michonne who was walking toward her slinging her katana clean.

"Easy enough," Andrea said. Michonne didn't respond and Andrea growled to herself a little. She didn't want to deal with silent Michonne. The woman had no reason to be sulking.

Andrea rolled her eyes and started toward the clinic. When she reached the door, she tried it. It was locked. It appeared that the clinic had been closed, legitimately, when everything had started. Either that, or someone had locked themselves inside it trying to hide.

"Locked," Andrea said, turning back toward Michonne.

"Do you want me to try to break the door in?" Michonne asked, sheathing her katana. Andrea regarded her a moment.

"You could do that," she said, "or I could get the crowbar that I thought to bring out of the truck and we could do this the easy way." She started toward the truck to retrieve the tool. "Your decision, really. You might work out some of your frustrations on the door if you tried to break it down, though."

Michonne didn't respond to her and at this point Andrea hadn't actually expected a response. She pulled open the back of the truck, picked up the crowbar, and walked slowly back to the door. There weren't any Walkers in the area and if it hadn't been for the chaos of a couple of wrecked cars in the street ahead of them and the grass that was far too high for an urban area, it would have almost seemed like a normal day.

Andrea pushed past Michonne and wedged the crowbar into the door frame, trying to pry it open.

"You know what your problem is, Michonne?" Andrea asked as she worked. "Your problem is that you don't trust anybody. Not even me. You think that everyone has some kind of ulterior motive. Like the kiss? It was just a kiss…but you think it was some kind of deep, dark plan against you. Why not, right? I mean it makes sense that I would just be kissing you talk about it with all my friends later. Or maybe I was going to tell my boyfriend about it."

The door popped open and Andrea pushed it the rest of the way open, stepping back a little in case there was a Walker inside that wanted to pop out like some kind of morbid Jack in the Box from the noise she'd made with the crowbar. When no Walker came, though, she stepped into the clinic and heard Michonne come in behind her.

The place was clearly abandoned. Nothing was out of place, it seemed. It hadn't been touched since everything had happened.

"Looks clear," Michonne said, walking off and gazing down a small hallway.

"Let's start packing up whatever we can get," Andrea said. She crossed around behind a desk and started looking for any sort of boxes or bags that they could use to take stuff back in. They thought ahead on a lot, but neither of them had thought to bring all the boxes that they'd taken on the last run.

Michonne disappeared and when she came back she had an assortment of boxes and containers. She passed some to Andrea and they started in opposite directions through the building, filling their containers with everything they could get. Andrea didn't know what even a third of what she was picking up would be good for, but she figured that anything was better than nothing and they could work out the details later.

After a good while of filling any empty thing that they could find and loading the containers into the truck while taking turns killing off curious Walkers, it seemed like the building was pretty much cleaned out.

"I don't think there's too much else here that's useful," Michonne said. "That is if anything we got is really all that useful."

"We took everything a decent sized clinic had," Andrea responded. "I suppose that something there could come in handy. Unless it's just another conspiracy to get you to waste your day packing boxes full of things that you'll never use."

Andrea turned, glancing back around the room around her as though she expected to see something important that they hadn't seen before. When she turned back, Michonne looked somewhat angry. She didn't say anything, though, she just stepped forward and brought her lips crashing to Andrea's, catching her off guard enough that she might have fallen backwards had it not been for a reception desk behind her that broke her fall.

Andrea didn't respond to the kiss at first, out of pure shock, but after a second she let herself respond. Michonne's soft lips pressed to hers and Andrea let her tongue venture out and dance against Michonne's. Michonne pressed against her, stepping forward a little more, and Andrea tried to ignore the feeling of the desk digging into her back.

Andrea finally let one of her hands trail out and come to Michonne's waist. She felt, blindly, the waistband of MIchonne's pants and the soft skin just above it where the shirt she was wearing didn't quite meet. Michonne's hands found Andrea's hair and they tangled into it, the kiss deepening.

Finally, though, they broke apart. Andrea was panting a little and Michonne was obviously short of breath. Andrea watched as Michonne's eyes darted from side to side, theoretically checking for Walkers or something else, but in actuality she seemed to simply be avoiding meeting Andrea's gaze.

"What was that?" Andrea asked finally, straightening up and reaching behind her to rub gently at the spot where the desk had dug into her skin.

Michonne shrugged a little.

"It was a kiss," Michonne said. "Weren't you the one that said that a kiss was just a kiss, not some master plan?"

Andrea couldn't help but smile. She wasn't sure, though, if it was Michonne's words that brought the smile to her face or if it was more the slightly panicked look her mystery woman was wearing. Michonne wasn't made of stone, not at all, and right this moment she looked as terrified of a kiss as a girl in Junior High might have looked.

"Am I your experiment?" Andrea teased. She felt a little freaked out herself, not so much by the kiss, but by how her body had responded to it. She was more than a little turned on right now, and she wasn't entirely sure what she wanted to do with it. She wasn't sure, either, what Michonne would do with it if she knew how Andrea felt.

Michonne rolled her eyes at Andrea and Andrea smiled again.

"So now what do we do?" Michonne asked.

Andrea raised her eyebrows at Michonne.

"Are we talking about the run or are we talking about the kiss?" She asked.

Michonne looked frustrated. Andrea smiled again and took her chances. She stepped up to Michonne and reached her arms around her, pulling her into another kiss. Michonne responded, her own hands going around Andrea.

Andrea liked the way that Michonne's body felt pressed against hers. She was muscular, and her body was hard, but it was soft too. It was warm and inviting. In fact, her warrior's body was far more inviting than her warrior's personality. Andrea caught Michonne's lip between her teeth and bit it gently. Michonne surprised her by moaning softly at the act, her breath catching.

Andrea felt Michonne's hands on her back, almost desperately searching for something. Finally they slid down and Michonne squeezed her ass, pulling her closer against her. Andrea came back for another kiss and then pulled away, trying to steady herself.

"We either stop this now, or we keep going," Andrea said, wiping her lip with her finger. Michonne was panting a little and she swallowed hard. She nodded a little.

"You're right," Michonne said. "You're right. We've got to go back. We're out in the open here and we don't know when Walkers might surprise us…or people…we need to head back."

Andrea hesitated a moment. Michonne wanted to head back to the house, but she hadn't exactly made clear if she was interested in continuing this when they returned or if she was trying to say that she was stopping this. Did the kissing end here? The touching? Andrea couldn't be sure. She _hoped_ that it didn't end, although she felt a flutter in her stomach when she thought about the fact that she wasn't positive she even knew what she wanted to happen when they were alone again.

"Right," she said finally. "We'll put the last of these boxes in the truck and we'll head out."

Andrea turned around, collecting up what was left of the boxes. She stepped out of the clinic behind Michonne and put the boxes into the back of the truck.

Outside there were a couple of Walkers and Andrea watched as Michonne walked toward them, perhaps swinging her hips a little more than she had before, but Andrea didn't know if it was her imagination. Michonne dropped the Walkers and Andrea closed the back of the truck. She took a deep breath as she circled around and opened the driver's side door. She got in and waited to close her door until just when Michonne was ready to close her own so that it would lessen the sound.

"Do we need to pick anything else up while we're here?" Andrea asked, cranking the truck.

"I think we're good," Michonne said. She was sitting up straighter than she had been on the ride there, still a little rigid. Andrea wondered if she was just freaked out by what had happened, or was she already going, like Andrea into the future and wondering what might happen.

Andrea felt strange about the whole thing. She was oddly excited with the possibility and the heat and attraction still pumping through her body, but she was almost as nervous as she'd been when she was younger and she'd kissed a boy for the very first time.

She steered the truck back down the roads that she'd travelled earlier, trying to remember her way back through town. She felt distracted by all the emotions that were flowing through her and playing with her mind, but she was determined to focus and get them back successfully. She glanced, every now and again, at Michonne. The woman started to relax a little, sinking back in her seat just a bit as they pulled onto one of the back roads, but she was clearly wound up.

As Andrea pulled the truck in front of the house and killed the engine, she felt her heart skip a beat and her stomach jump a little at the thought that they'd have to unload everything they'd gotten from the clinic, but after that the night would be relatively empty…and they'd have to find some way to pass the time.


	10. Chapter 10

**AN: OK, here's your warning. Smut, femslash, etc. ahead. If you haven't caught on yet, that's a pretty good warning in general with this fic, so if it's going to bother you, turn back now. And if it does bother you, you might not want to continue with this story. It was nice having you with us this far though. **

**For those of you that are hanging around, I hope you enjoy where all our two ladies go from here. **

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When everything was unloaded and the house was secure, there was more than enough tension fill the area to choke anyone alive. Andrea was certain she wasn't the only one that could feel it and Michonne had developed a certain jumpiness that was, until now, somewhat uncommon for her.

Andrea spent a while in the storage room they'd established fishing through boxes and trying to make heads or tails of much of the contents there. It was easy enough to sort out the things that were pretty obvious, but a lot of the random bottles and vials of medication were a little more complicated. They needed to find some kind of book store somewhere that might have some sort of medication guide before they accidentally killed one another with some of this stuff.

When Andrea assumed that she had given Michonne enough time and space to overcome her nervous twitches, she took some of the gauze and some of the salve that she had been able to identify and made her way back to the living area in search of the other woman.

Andrea found Michonne lying on her stomach in the living room, reading some book by the light of one of the oil lamps. At least she seemed to be relaxing some.

"What are you reading?" Andrea asked.

Michonne looked up at her like she hadn't heard her come in at all, but Andrea wasn't entirely sure she could believe that was true. Michonne seemed capable of hearing noise before it even happened and she hadn't exactly gone for stealthy in her return to the room.

"Some really bad book," Michonne said. Andrea chuckled.

"Then why are you reading it?" Andrea asked.

"They all looked really bad," Michonne said, "but there wasn't anything else to read."

Andrea sat down on the floor beside where Michonne was lying.

"How's your hand?" Andrea asked.

Michonne looked at the hand she'd burned earlier and flexed her fingers a little.

"Not bad," she said.

Andrea took the hand and pulled it to her putting the things she'd brought with her in a pile on the floor. She peeled back the tape and took the gauze off one of the burns.

"Well it looks pretty nasty," Andrea commented. She peeled away the gauze from the other fingers.

"Burns don't heal in a couple of hours," Michonne said, rolling onto her side and abandoning the book to make it easier for Andrea to examine the fingers she was studying.

"I know that," Andrea said, ignoring Michonne's sarcasm. "This should help, though. A couple of days and it won't be anything major." She opened the tube and began dabbing the salve at the burns.

"It's nothing major now," Michonne said. "You're making a bigger fuss than needs to be made."

Andrea rewrapped the burns without saying anything to Michonne. When she'd wrapped the last piece of tape, she rubbed her thumb over Michonne's fingertips. She half expected Michonne to pull away from her, but she didn't.

Andrea glanced at Michonne, cocking her head to the side a little. Some of the panicked look of earlier crossed the warrior's face again and Andrea smiled a little. She reached her hand out, touching Michonne on the cheek and seeing Michonne roll her eyes toward her hand.

"So do kisses always make you this nervous, or is it just me?" Andrea asked. She didn't move her hand. Michonne rolled onto her back then so that both her hands were free, and as Andrea's hand lost contact with her cheek, Michonne wrapped her fingers around Andrea's wrist.

"It's just…" Michonne started. Andrea shifted her weight a little, but didn't pull her arm free from Michonne's grip. "I'm not gay," Michonne finished, blankly.

Andrea chuckled and shrugged.

"Well what do you know? Me either," Andrea said.

She didn't know what else to say. What had they done? They'd shared a few kisses. They'd shared a few really, really good kisses. They'd shared a little electricity perhaps, a few moments of yearning for more. How did you define that or put a label on it? What exactly was the proper thing to call it?

Andrea could tell that it was confusing for Michonne and it was confusing for her as well. She'd never kissed a woman before, and apparently neither had Michonne. Clearly, then, neither of them were gay, right? Andrea wasn't sure if you could just wake up one day and decide you were a lesbian because you happened to kiss the woman that you were trapped at the end of the world with, and you found out you liked it…

It was confusing and she didn't know what it meant, but she wasn't quite as afraid of it as she suspected that Michonne was, at least for the moment.

There was something strangely exciting too, though, about the moment. Andrea felt like she was in charge here of any progress that was going to be made. If she kissed Michonne again, if she urged her forward, then there was the possibility that things would go somewhere…even somewhere she wasn't sure about. If she left it alone though, and didn't push any farther, they were likely to stay just where they were with just the few moments that had happened between them and not any great likelihood that they'd be repeated. Michonne had kissed her at the clinic, but Michonne was more or less responding to her. This time, in this situation, it was Michonne who needed to follow Andrea.

Andrea smiled. She realized she had no idea what she was doing and she was suddenly sorry for every guy that she'd ever dated and put in the position of trying to figure out how to advance anything. She recognized, all too completely, that she had no chance at being smooth at this or good at this at all. Finally she decided to go for it and hope that Michonne was too distracted by her own little freak out party to notice Andrea's complete lack of smoothness in the situation.

"I'm going to kiss you again," Andrea said. "And that's all it is…just a kiss."

Michonne nodded a little and Andrea moved herself to be lying on the floor next to Michonne, hovering slightly above her. She brought her lips to hers again, softly at first. Then Michonne parted her lips and Andrea sunk further into the kiss, letting it get as deep as she dared to go. She was relieved that Michonne was responding, a good deal actually.

Andrea let her hand trail to Michonne's side and slid down her side to her hip. Michonne brought a free arm to Andrea's back and Andrea broke he kiss to move herself closer to Michonne. Andrea kissed the side of Michonne's face then, and dipped down her neck, kissing there. She was surprised at how much she enjoyed the smell of Michonne, the feel of the soft skin of her neck against her lips. Andrea nibbled at her collarbone and ran the hand from Michonne's hips up her side again coming to rest with her hand around her ribcage.

Michonne was panting when Andrea pushed herself up to hover over her again. The terrified look was gone now and replaced with perhaps a little insecurity, but nothing quite as deer in the headlights as she had been before.

Andrea was thankful that Michonne had shed some of the clothes that she was wearing earlier, thinking that the t shirt that she had on right now was enough to get off without having had to fumble through trying to get something like the clasp of the cloak undone. Andrea slipped her fingers under the bottom of the shirt and spread her hands out on the warm skin underneath the shirt before she pushed it up. Michonne sat up a little, bringing it over her head.

Andrea sat up, and to her surprise, Michonne brought her hands over and pulled her shirt up as well. Andrea decided not to judge Michonne for the slight clumsiness to her actions. This was simply going to have to be a judgement free environment on both sides.

Andrea decided to save them both the hassle and reached around, unsnapping her own bra and tossing it to the side. She was a little grateful when Michonne did the same. Suddenly, though, they'd both hit another wall of realization or insecurity and for a moment Michonne laid there, propped up on her elbows, while Andrea sat, leaning a little, beside her.

Andrea smiled again and touched Michonne's cheek, letting her fingers trail across her face and down her throat.

"What are you thinking?" Andrea asked.

Michonne chuckled a little and it surprised Andrea.

"I'm trying not to think," Michonne said. "I don't know what to think."

Andrea slid back, and returning her hand to Michonne's side, she dipped her head and took one of Michonne's nipples into her mouth, sucking and trailing her tongue against it. Michonne moaned, and her head rolled back. Andrea stopped a minute to keep herself from laughing and repeated the action with the other nipple. Michonne moaned again and squirmed a little.

Andrea came up, kissing her again and Michonne lowered herself to the floor, tangling her fingers in Andrea's hair again and pulling her mouth closer to hers.

"That's kinda hot," Andrea said with a chuckle as she broke the kiss. Michonne's eyes focused directly on hers and for a moment she was a little thrown off by it. She felt like Michonne wasn't just looking at her, she was trying to look into her. She held the gaze for a moment, surprised that even though they were both there, in this position, she enjoyed the moment of that look more than she'd enjoyed anything so far. "Do you want to stop?" She asked after a moment. Michonne shook her head and Andrea kissed her again, breaking the kiss and resting her forehead against Michonne's as she slid her hand down the soft skin of Michonne's stomach and just into the waistband of her pants. "Last chance," she said.

Michonne's only response then was to lean up a little and fiddle with the button on Andrea's pants. Andrea moved her hand and helped Michonne, knowing that this particular pair of pants could be temperamental even for her. She considered being coy about it and leaving her underwear on, but they both knew where this was headed and honestly at the rate of ability both of them were demonstrating at this moment, there wasn't any need for any more obstacles, so she bit the bullet and shimmied completely out of her clothes before coming to her knees and tugging at Michonne's button.

Michonne surprised her again, obviously chuckling a little at Andrea's clear level of being done with the game and mirrored Andrea's actions. Once she was free of her pants, Michonne sat up, kissing Andrea again and cupping her breast, pinching her nipple between her fingers. Andrea moaned into her mouth in response.

"Let's go to the bed at least," Michonne whispered as though they weren't completely alone, pulling away from the kiss. "If we're going to do this, let's do it right."

Andrea chuckled in response.

"OK," she whispered back. "Let's take it to the bed."

Andrea was surprised that she felt her own cheeks burn at saying that. Without any effort to try and make the transition somewhat romantic or even picturesque, both of them crawled toward the mattress that they shared. Andrea reached it first and just as she crawled onto it, Michonne pushed her backwards, kissing her again.

Andrea rested herself on her left elbow and reached her right hand between Michonne's legs, teasing her a little before trailing her fingers down and dipping one inside of her, her mind swimming at all the thoughts that were running through her mind. Michonne moaned and lips trailed down Andrea's neck as she bucked a little against her hand. Andrea slipped another finger into her teasing her.

"You're wet," Andrea said, chuckling a little.

Andrea didn't expect Michonne to dip her own hand between Andrea's legs then and rub her, teasing her and causing her breath to catch before she gently slid her fingers inside her, matching her rhythm with the one that Andrea had established, and broken for a second.

"How about that?" Michonne said, her voice sounding a little more gravelly than it had before. "You are too."

Andrea tried to focus on continuing her movements against Michonne, but she was distracted for a moment by the pleasure of the other woman's touch.

Andrea bucked against Michonne's hand and Michonne bucked against hers. Repeatedly they both lost and found their rhythm until finally Michonne, who was hovering over Andrea brought herself down, their bodies finally laying against each other, each trying to tease the other over the edge as their hips now bucked against each other and against the hands inexpertly doing everything they could to bring about some release.

When Andrea realized that Michonne was right on the very edge, she focused her attention more on the other woman than on the touch she was receiving. She leaned up, biting gently at Michonne's neck.

"Don't fight it," she said. "Close your eyes and let it go. I want you to," Andrea said. She stroked at Michonne a few more times, bringing her hips up and grinding into her before Michonne went over the edge, shaking, her body clenching repeatedly around the fingers that Andrea still had buried inside of her. Her tremor was enough to push Andrea the rest of the way and she let her head fall back, her own orgasm washing over her.

Finally, they lay panting, Michonne half collapsed on top of Andrea, in a sweaty pile of blankets. Andrea wrapped her arms around Michonne's back and brought their mouths together. Michonne kissed her, panting into her mouth.

Andrea wondered exactly what Michonne thought about the encounter. It had been sex unlike any that she'd ever had before on several different levels and now she didn't want to break away from the moment there with Michonne's body soft against hers, warm skin on warm skin. The connection that Andrea felt almost humming between them was something she'd never felt before and she didn't want to lose at the moment. She was grateful that Michonne wasn't pulling away and didn't seem anxious to end it herself. She kissed the side of Andrea's face and shifted her weight off her a little, pulling Andrea more on her side so as to not lose the connection.

They stayed there for more than a few moments, hands still ghosting over the other's body, exploring softly now with no urgency. Lips touching here or there without the need to worry about what the touching meant.

Finally, though, like all good things, it had to come to an end, and Michonne was the first to break away a little from the embrace.

"We have to eat," she said. "I can make something."

Andrea smiled at her. Michonne wasn't looking at her the same way she had been earlier, and the softer look of her face seemed to make her eyes bigger, brighter.

"I like your eyes," Andrea said.

Michonne laughed at her softly and sighed.

"What?" Andrea asked, her fingers trailing between Michonne's shoulder blades in a pattern.

Michonne shook her head a little.

"I don't know," she said. "I don't know what that was…I don't know if we did that right."

It was Andrea's turn to laugh.

"Did you like it?" She asked.

Michonne nodded her head a little.

"Me too," Andrea said. "So I guess we did OK."

"What does it mean?" Michonne asked.

Andrea sighed and rolled her eyes.

"You and your meanings," she said. "You know if we're going to find some island somewhere and live there until we die, I'm going to get pretty tired of figuring out what everything means."

Michonne chuckled and kissed Andrea's jaw softly.

"I'm sorry…I was just asking," Michonne said.

"Why don't we not worry about what it means?" Andrea asked. "Does it matter what we call it or what it means? I mean who's going to ask questions? Are the Walkers going to start demanding explanations?"

Michonne pulled away then, pulling herself up to her knees.

"You're right," she said. "I don't suppose we have to have all the answers right now, right?"

"There's no master plan to anything, right?" Andrea said. "We're just playing it by ear."

Michonne smiled a little and got up, crossing the floor and starting to pull on her clothes. She gathered Andrea's up and tossed them at her.

"I'm going to start something to eat. Why don't you step outside and get the generator going? Hot shower after dinner?" Michonne asked.

Andrea smiled and started pulling on her own clothes.

"Couldn't have come up with a better plan myself," Andrea said.


	11. Chapter 11

**AN: Sorry that it's taken me a bit to get back around to this one! **

**I hope you enjoy! Let me know what you think!**

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"I'm not being negative," Michonne protested, looking into the shower. "I'm being realistic."

Andrea sighed, sitting on the toilet and working to untangle the hair tie that had gotten wrapped in her curls.

"If you want me to take a shower by myself, Michonne, then it's not a big deal, just say so," Andrea said. "You know if we're going to live on that stupid island of yours for the rest of eternity I'm not looking for it to be awkward."

Michonne shook her head a little at the blonde.

"I'm just saying it's a small shower and it's going to be crowded. I didn't say I wanted you to shower by yourself…I'm just warning you that I don't think we're going to fit with a lot of room to spare," Michonne said.

Andrea chuckled.

"Maybe I shouldn't have had that second helping of beans. Then we'd fit better," Andrea said.

Michonne stared at her.

Michonne wasn't sure what was going on here. Andrea didn't want to label it, but Michonne's analytical mind couldn't stop turning it over and over. She liked having labels for things. Labels helped her feel like she really understood what she was dealing with, like she really understood how to proceed with things. Calling something what it was sort of served to lay some kind of groundwork about where it was headed and what could be expected in the future.

She'd tried to explain this perspective to Andrea over dinner, but she wasn't sure she'd done the best job of explaining what she wanted to get across. Even as she tried to tell the blonde why she'd feel better having a clear name for their relationship, she'd realized that the words coming out of her mouth made it sound like she was even crazier than she probably was.

Andrea insisted, and Michonne knew she was right even if her brain argued that she didn't like it, that they didn't need call it anything.

They were friends…and they'd had sex. They could choose to leave it at that, some one time event that happened in the heat of the moment, or they could see where it went.

Except Michonne didn't think it happened in the heat of the moment, or not exactly. The more she thought about it, the more she felt like it had been brewing to some degree. She didn't want to blame it, either, on some kind of sex deprivation theory. It wasn't that they'd gone without for so long that suddenly they'd been overcome with simply the sheer need to get off. That was oversimplifying things entirely too much.

Michonne was attracted to Andrea, and that was just the cold hard truth of the matter. Andrea was attracted to her. They were two people who had both been alone, granted in differing circumstances, in the wilderness, and they'd come together to find out they'd fallen, without even meaning to, into some kind of mutual attraction. And that's where the problems came for Michonne's label seeking mind and Andrea's qué será, será attitude.

"Ok, Mich, you're overthinking this too much," Andrea said, getting up suddenly with a sigh. She shrugged and shook her head, coming to stand in front of Michonne. She brought her hand up, rubbing Michonne's cheek bone for a second with her thumb. "It was nice…I enjoyed it. I hoped we could do it again, but if it's going to stress you out…" Andrea paused and shrugged. "If it's going to stress you out this much then let's just forget about it and go back to the way things were. OK? No hard feelings."

Michonne frowned at Andrea.

"I don't want to forget about it," Michonne said, finally.

A hint of a smile fleeted across Andrea's face.

"Then why can't we just take a shower and get ready for bed? Why the debate Mich?" Andrea asked.

Michonne sighed. She peeled her shirt over her head in response to Andrea and Andrea stood there looking at her, a smirk on her face like she was thinking of some at least semi sarcastic comment that she wasn't sure she was going to share or not. Michonne shimmied out of the underwear that she'd put back on to wear during dinner, noticing that her companion wasn't moving at all other than to twist a section of her curls round and round her finger.

Michonne leaned and turned the shower on. The water didn't get hot there, no matter how long the generator ran, but it at least got warm and a running shower of lukewarm water was a vast improvement over freezing creeks or sponging off with water heated in a pot over fire. Michonne stepped into the shower, keeping her eyes locked on Andrea who still hadn't made so much as a movement to start undressing.

"Am I showering alone?" Michonne asked.

Andrea looked at her like she was carefully considering her response. She tilted her head to the side.

"If I say no, can you stop being freaked out?" Andrea asked.

Michonne nodded.

"I'm not freaked out, not anymore," she said. It wasn't entirely true, but it was strangely growing more true as the moments passed. The entire event did freak Michonne out a little, and the lack of a clear definition for whatever it was that was going on between them or whatever it was that was beginning was a little troubling, but the feeling was starting to fade a little.

Andrea nodded slightly and backed up, shucking her underwear and finally pulling her shirt over her head. She stepped into the shower and pulled the curtain closed.

The shower was the biggest in the house, but still nothing that Michonne would have expected to see in Better Homes and Gardens. It was a small shower and it was pretty evident that whoever built the house had intended to spend most of their life showering alone. She'd eyed, upstairs, a rather large tub, though and she thought that if they stayed for some length of time…and if whatever this was continued…she might see how Andrea responded to the idea of at least once filling the thing and giving a nice bath a shot.

As it stood, though, they were toe to toe in the small shower. They were so close to each other, in fact, that with a slight giggled Andrea eased herself forward and pushed her toes down on the ends of Michonne's.

"So are we allowed to touch beyond necessity, or with that freak you out again?" Andrea asked, setting her stare on MIchonne's eyes. Michonne swallowed, lost for a moment in the blue of Andrea's eyes and the realization that she enjoyed staring into those two pools more than she would have thought she would.

Michonne couldn't bring herself to respond verbally, though. She wasn't even sure what she wanted to say. Once upon a time she'd made her living as a lawyer. Her words had been her livelihood, but then when the insanity descended down upon them, words hadn't come as easily to her as they once had.

She wasn't sure she ever considered words to be entirely honest, though, and maybe that's what had made her able to use them so well in the courtroom. They were used for getting your point across when you had nothing else but words…and they were great for convincing people of things, whether or not you really had conviction in what you were saying…but words were easy to fake. Words were really unreliable little things.

She chose, then, instead of searching for the words that she wasn't sure were going to come out, to lean in and bring her lips to Andrea's. Andrea responded, and Michonne shivered a little at the tender scratch of Andrea's teeth against her lips as she nipped at them.

Michonne brought her hands to Andrea's breasts, cupping them and feeling their heft for the moment in hers, Andrea's nipples hardening against her palms. Michonne broke away from the blonde and looked into her eyes again, noting that her pupils were obviously dilated, though Michonne wasn't positive if it was owing to lust or to the dimly lit bathroom provided to them.

Michonne pushed Andrea back and the woman didn't protest. Once her back was as flat against the shower wall as it could be, Michonne slowly started to lower herself to the floor, attempting not to lose eye contact with Andrea in the process in case the blonde wanted, in some way, to signal her wish to stop. Andrea didn't say anything, though, until Michonne paused in front of her, crowded as it was, on her knees.

"You don't have to do anything you don't want to do," Andrea said, her voice sounding throatier than it often did, than it had only moments before.

Michonne leaned forward, licking a small trail up the inside of Andrea's thigh and she was surprised when Andrea's only response was to move her feet, spreading her legs farther apart.

Michonne moved to the other thigh, bringing her tongue up a similar trail. Andrea shifted a little and Michonne decided to take her chances. She trailed the tip of her tongue across Andrea's nub for a moment before she wrapped her lips around her, suckling and letting her tongue flit across the tip. Andrea gasped and moaned at the act and Michonne moved her hands from the floor to wrap around the back of Andrea's thighs.

She considered for a moment, asking Andrea if she was actually doing this the way that she wanted, but when Andrea leaned forward and grasped her shoulders, moaning out again, Michonne assumed that she had guessed correctly simply from trying to emulate what she'd wanted to direct others to do to her in her life.

Michonne shifted her position a little and trailed her tongue out to lick down the slit, tasting Andrea's arousal against her tongue. She felt like she was playing for a little, the water beating against her back as she tested first one possibility and then the other, her hands finally moving up to wrap her fingers around Andrea's hips for when she bucked at her.

Finally, though, with the water beginning to cool beyond a point that was going to be comfortable for either of them, Michonne moved her hand to tease Andrea with her fingertips. She returned to her original position, sucking and licking at the nub as she worked to establish a rhythm with her fingers. For a moment she grew frustrated, wondering if she was doing this correctly, but finally Andrea seemed to seize almost, her cries intensifying and her muscles clenched around Michonne's fingers. Michonne continued, though, milking out the pleasure for Andrea for some time after the initial wave had passed, amazed at the fact that she could continue to illicit the jerking motions from Andrea's body, but concerned that her legs might not hold out.

Michonne dipped back into the cooling spray of the shower and washed her face, before wrestling to her feet, climbling the wall with her hands around Andrea. As she regained her feet in the tight enclosure, Michonne leaned in and kissed Andrea again, their tongues snaking around each other as Andrea panted into her mouth.

"OK?" Michonne asked when they broke apart.

Andrea looked at her out of the corner of her eye, her head tipped to the side and resting on the back wall of the shower.

"Go ahead," she panted.

"Go ahead and what?" Michonne asked.

Andrea smiled.

"Go ahead and gloat," she said, her breathing slowing. "You know you want to, it's written all over your face."

Michonne smiled and reached her hand out, touching Andrea's cheek and bringing her face around again to kiss her, this time softer than before.

"I wasn't gloating," Michonne said when they broke away. "I might later, but right now I wasn't."

Andrea smiled and leaned in, pecking Michonne's lips. She shivered a little and Michonne realized that she was only catching the mist of the water, which by nature would be the coldest part of the spray, not that the spray itself was exactly warm anymore.

"It's my turn," Andrea said.

Michonne pecked at her lips this, time, barely brushing them together.

"Later," she said. "Your lips will turn blue soon. Let's shower before we freeze to death."

Andrea nodded, looking almost like she was fighting her teeth chattering. Michonne had to admit that now the water had taken on such a brisk feeling that it was going to be nice to crawl into their bed in front of the fire that would be dying down from dinner.

If nothing else, at least, their little space in the house was warm and cozy…and it appeared that it was only growing warmer.

Michonne would have liked, if she had admitted the truth, to have taken turns bathing each other. They were driven out, though by necessity, the archenemy of romantic endeavors, and both of them stood with their teeth chattering slightly outside the shower when they were done.

Michonne toweled off as quickly as she could and wrapped her towel around herself. The majority of the house was chilled, so she made an unceremonious dart for the living area. As soon as she came in there, though, she was enveloped by the heat that they'd trapped from the dinner fire. She dropped the soggy towel on the floor and went to her bag.

"Don't," Andrea said. Michonne jumped a little. She'd been wrapped in her thoughts and not entirely prepared for Andrea to speak.

"What?" Michonne asked.

"Don't put your clothes on," Andrea said. "We'll be plenty warm in the bed with body heat…and I like the feel of skin on skin."

"And if we have to get out fast?" Michonne asked. "If there's a Walker problem or a fire or whatever and we have to make a run for it?"

Andrea stood, drying herself off, and considering Michonne's points. The truth was that as much as they might have liked the idea of sleeping naked, there was a chance in the middle of the night that they'd have to make a run for it. Though they weren't sleeping in full attire at the time, having something on at least would beat having to make a run for it completely naked.

Andrea smiled.

"And if we put the clothes on?" Andrea asked. "I thought I might give you my appreciation for your remarkable aquatic performance. If I do, you'll be just as naked as you are now, won't you? So why bother getting dressed?"

"And if we do have to run for it?" Michonne repeated.

Andrea shrugged.

"We put clothes by the corner of the bed, Mich. If an emergency breaks out we get into what we can and we worry about it later," Andrea said. "You can't sleep with your boots on all the time."

Michonne looked around her a little. Bit by bit she was changing from what she'd been before she found Andrea. She had camped in houses, but never quite like she was here. Their bags were only semi packed and their things were somewhat scattered about to make their camping life more convenient. It wasn't what it had been like when she was on her own. When she was on her own she _had_ slept with her boots on nearly all the time and everything was always ready to go in a moment's notice. She unpacked as she used things and packed them immediately.

A little panic rose inside of her as she realized that she wasn't as prepared as she liked to be. The preparation made her feel more secure…it made her feel more in control of a world that had spiraled out of her control in so many ways.

"Fine," Michonne said. "We put clothes by the bed. Tomorrow I want us to do something, though."

Andrea sat on the edge of the bed still squeezing water from her hair and looking at Michonne. Michonne was standing now, near her bag, but she hadn't made her way over to the mattress.

"Anything," Andrea said.

"I want us to make one more run," Michonne said. "I want us to set this place up, divide it into camp and what we'll need to move on."

Andrea shrugged a little.

"Fine…we can do whatever you want. It's not like we had a full day of museums and shops planned," Andrea responded.

"I just think we should be prepared," Michonne said. "If we have to move on in a hurry it would be better to have bags packed…you know…have things ready to go."

Andrea nodded.

"I agree. What did you have in mind? I mean to pick up?" She asked.

Michonne looked around trying to answer that question for herself before she offered any information to Andrea.

"I don't know. Have bags packed. Clothes, things we need to have to move quickly. We can set it aside, designate a space near the door to grab it if we've got to grab it and go. It's fine to be comfortable while we're here, but I'm worried about being too comfortable."

"No, you're right," Andrea said. "It can't hurt to be prepared. Tomorrow we'll go into town, get extras of things…it won't hurt anything if we have a set of stuff to leave here and a set to take with us."

Michonne felt a little better at least knowing that they were going to prepared. Whether or not they needed some emergency plan, since she felt like the house was pretty secure, at least from any Walker threats they'd seen, she thought that she'd rest easier knowing that at a moment's notice they could run for it and not be entirely empty handed. Her lifestyle with Andrea was already pretty different than her lifestyle before her, but at least she wasn't having to abandon entirely the security that she'd come to rely on.

"You don't think I'm overreacting?" Michonne asked.

Andrea got up from the mattress and went to her bag. Before she responded verbally she took a set of her clothes and put them near the head of the mattress on her side of the bed. She stood up and put her hands on her hips facing Michonne.

"You're not overreacting. You're being prepared," Andrea said. She crossed the room and wrapped her arms around Michonne, leaning her head against her shoulder. Michonne felt her pulse quicken at the touch and was aware that her breathing had also picked up a little. "That's how I know I'm safe with you...we're ready for whatever comes our way."

Michonne swallowed, melting a moment into the feeling of the embrace. The feeling of Andrea's warm skin pressed against her own bare body. For a moment there was no expectation except the comfort of one person's body melting into the curves of another. Michonne felt her breathing slowing as she sunk into the hug and wrapped her arms around Andrea letting her own chin rest against the shoulder of her comrade.

"We'll be safe," Michonne said. "Strength in numbers, right?" She ventured, her own words sounding foreign to her ears.

Andrea pulled away a little and placed a soft kiss on her jaw.

"Strength in numbers," Andrea said with a smile. "Get your clothes, let's go to bed. Tomorrow we'll come up with an emergency backup plan and then we can rest easy for the time being."

Michonne turned back toward her bag to get her clothes out while Andrea settled on the mattress again. She brought her own clothes over, dropping them at the head of the bed. When she'd started out on this endeavor she'd been alone by circumstance, and she'd convinced herself that alone was the way to make it. It was the only way to make it. Suddenly, though, she wasn't feeling alone anymore, and she was beginning to think that it was a state that she didn't wish to return to. It was nice having someone else there to share the burden with…the worry about the future…and the moments when the worry left you for just a bit.

Michonne was finding that her world was changing, that she was changing, and she was happy having Andrea by her side.


End file.
